Sex-Based Parent Attributions for Child Behaviour

Abstract

A cross-sectional survey with 399 parents of 1-5-year-old children aimed to investigate the extent to which parents make sex-based attributions for children’s behaviours, and the association of parents’ own gender and social role attitudes with those attributions. Overall, parents were more likely to attribute child behaviour to children’s individual characteristics, age, and lack of socialisation than to sex. However, parents were more likely to make sex-based attributions for scenarios featuring boys compared to girls. In this sample, sex-based attributions were associated with attitudes towards social roles, but not with demographics, self-ascribed masculinity-femininity, and attitudes towards marital roles and child-rearing.