Parents of firstborn male and female infants completed questionnaires concerning their perceptions of their infants. One question focused on how important it was for their children to become either very masculine or very feminine. It was predicted that the less parents stressed the importance of gender appropriateness, the less they would view…

Examined family and religious variables that affect transmission of religious values from parents to early adolescent sons. Responses from 68 Protestant mother-father-son triads showed that mothers mostly influenced sons' practical application of religion, while fathers influenced sons' church attendance. Mothers and fathers functioned differently…

Reviews literature for strongest position with respect to sex differences in parent-child relationships, namely that both parents' sex and child's sex contribute to four distinct dyad relationships. Found many claims and assumptions about the distinctness of relationships but little empirical evidence. When dyadic distinctness was found, it often…

Differences were found between father/son and father/daughter dyads in such behaviors as father prohibitions, child mischievousness, mutual proximity, toy exchange, and child toy play. A total of 107 father/child dyads involving year-old children were observed. (Author/RH)

Examined whether mothers' and fathers' temperaments influence quality of relationships with sons and daughters and whether divergent relationships exist between adolescent temperament and adolescent-parent relationships for boys and girls. Survey results supported link between parent temperament, particularly maternal temperament, and quality of…

Support of aging parents is usually credited to daughters. To investigate the nature of support provided by sons and daughters to married or widowed mothers, married and widowed mothers from the 1977 Social Security Administration's Midwestern Retirement Community Study listed important people and details of the support (emotional, social, and…

The gender variable in adult child caregiving has not been clearly examined. Research often uses non-random participants, inappropriate caregiver definitions, non-differentiation of helping tasks, avoidance of daughter/son comparison, and the non-use of the elder's marital status as a control. A study was conducted to examine the gender variable…

Studied directives which mothers and fathers addressed to their preschool children. Fathers produced more directives than mothers and tended to phrase them as imperatives. No differences were found in parental directives to girls and boys. Thus, children appear to learn to request action in sex-associated ways through parental modeling. (GC)

Examined data on 1,023 married women from 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households. Found that mothers with at least one boy reported significantly lower propensity to divorce compared to mothers with only girls. Fathers in families with boys were more engaged with children, which was associated with mothers perceiving less disadvantage…

Examined selected problem-solving behaviors of school-age children and their parents in dyadic and triadic contexts. Parent-child interactions revealed sex-of-parent and sex-of-child differences as a function of problem-solving contexts. (Author/BB)

Examined free recall narratives of younger and older children and their parents independently interviewed about injuries requiring hospital emergency treatment. Found that mothers' narratives were more cohesive and coherent than fathers', and girls' narratives differed from boys' in parallel ways. Parent and child measures were correlated;…

Used data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine extent to which presence or absence of biological fathers from home was associated with gender difference in presence or absence of children and gender differences in home environment encountered by children. Results for black children were less systematic than those for white…

Examined the relationship between a mother's work status and educational level and the sex-role attitudes of her offspring. Results suggested that the association between maternal characteristics and attitudes toward women in the labor force is stronger for males than it is for females. (Author)

Examined gender differences in self-reported and observed conversations about sexual issues. Gender differences (more mother-daughter than mother-son) were found in the extent of sexual communication based on adolescents' reports, but no gender differences were found based on mothers' reports, or on observations of conversations. (Author)

This study examined gender differences in early adolescents' adaptation to stepfamilies in which the mother had custody. Parent-child interaction was compared in mother-custody stepfamilies and intact families. Results indicated that girls had more difficulty interacting with stepfathers than sons did. (SH)