Mothers’ Gender-Role Attitudes and Their Responses to Young Children’s Hypothetical Display of Shy and Aggressive Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of child gender and maternal gender-role attitudes in mothers’ reactions
to hypothetical vignettes depicting their preschool-aged child displaying aggressive and shy behaviors. Participants were
78 mothers of preschool-aged children (43 girls, 35 boys; M
_age = 47.44 months, SD = 11.00) living in a mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Mothers provided reports of their gender-role attitudes and rated
their expectancies and emotional/behavioral reactions following hypothetical vignettes depicting their child displaying physically
aggressive and shy-withdrawn behaviors. It was hypothesized that mothers would respond with more negative (and less positive)
emotions and expectancies in response to children’s gender-incongruent problem behaviors (i.e., shyness among boys, aggression among girls). It was further hypothesized that these gender effects
would be more pronounced among mothers espousing more traditional (i.e., less egalitarian) gender-role attitudes. Results
of multiple regression analyses indicated that mothers anticipated more negative consequences to aggression among boys than
among girls. Several significant interaction effects also emerged between child gender and maternal gender-role attitudes,
particularly with regards to children’s shyness. Among mothers of boys, a more egalitarian gender-role attitude was associated
with greater anticipated benefits of shyness, and both more positive and more negative emotional responses to shyness. For
mothers of girls, however, the opposite pattern emerged. Results provide some support for the notion that mothers may enforce
gender-typical social behaviors in their children, particularly if they themselves hold more traditional gender-role attitudes.