Working at play: Gender-typed play and children’s visions of future work and family roles.

Fulcher, Megan; Coyle, Emily F.

doi:10.1037/0000077-012

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 95 publications

(142 reference statements)

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“…Gender‐related expectations also figure in children's opportunities for exploratory learning, especially in the STEM domains. Boys and girls tend to play with different types of toys, and parents tend to provide gender‐stereotyped toys and activities to their children (e.g., Fulcher & Coyle, ; Martin, Eisenbud, & Rose, ). Gender‐stereotyped toys provided different types of affordances for children's exploratory play, with building and block toys allowing for engineering‐related exploration, while doll play invites exploration through pretend play and social interaction.…”

Section: Exploratory Play and Causal Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent–Child Interaction in Museums

Callanan

Legare²,

Sobel³

et al. 2020

Monographs Society Res Child

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Young children develop causal knowledge through everyday family conversations and activities. Children's museums are an informative setting for studying the social context of causal learning because family members engage together in everyday scientific thinking as they play in museums. In this multisite collaborative project, we investigate children's developing causal thinking in the context of family interaction at museum exhibits. We focus on explaining and exploring as two fundamental collaborative processes in parent–child interaction, investigating how families explain and explore in open‐ended collaboration at gear exhibits in three children's museums in Providence, RI, San Jose, CA, and Austin, TX. Our main research questions examined (a) how open‐ended family exploration and explanation relate to one another to form a dynamic for children's learning; (b) how that dynamic differs for families using different interaction styles, and relates to contextual factors such as families' science background, and (c) how that dynamic predicts children's independent causal thinking when given more structured tasks. We summarize findings on exploring, explaining, and parent–child interaction (PCI) styles. We then present findings on how these measures related to one another, and finally how that dynamic predicts children's causal thinking. In studying children's exploring we described two types of behaviors of importance for causal thinking: (a) Systematic Exploration: Connecting gears to form a gear machine followed by spinning the gear machine. (b) Resolute Behavior: Problem‐solving behaviors, in which children attempted to connect or spin a particular set of gears, hit an obstacle, and then persisted to succeed (as opposed to moving on to another behavior). Older children engaged in both behaviors more than younger children, and the proportion of these behaviors were correlated with one another. Parents and children talked to each other while interacting with the exhibits. We coded causal language, as well as other types of utterances. Parents' causal language predicted children's causal language, independent of age. The proportion of parents' causal language also predicted the proportion of children's systematic exploration. Resolute behavior on the part of children did not correlate with parents' causal language, but did correlate with children's own talk about actions and the exhibit. We next considered who set goals for the play in a more holistic measure of parent–child interaction style, identifying dyads as parent‐directed, child‐directed, or jointly‐directed in their interaction with one another. Children in different parent–child interaction styles engaged in different amounts of systematic exploration and had parents who engaged in different amounts of causal language. Resolute behavior and the language related to children engaging in such troubleshooting, seemed more consistent across the three parent–child interaction styles. Using general linear mixed modeling, we considered relations within s...

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Section: Exploratory Play and Causal Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent–Child Interaction in Museums

Callanan

Legare²,

Sobel³

et al. 2020

Monographs Society Res Child

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Empirical work has also linked play to skill outcomes (see Coyle, 2018, andLiben, Schroeder, Borriello, &Weisgram, 2018, for recent reviews). Toys culturally viewed as for boys or girls afford somewhat different skill-building opportunities, with boys' toys being more likely to reward action (Pennell, 1994), be exciting, dangerous, and more realistic (Blakemore & Centers, 2005), and to embed within them information about technology or mechanics (Francis, 2010).…”

Section: Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered Packaging of a STEM Toy Influences Children's Play, Mechanical Learning, and Mothers’ Play Guidance

Coyle

Liben

2018

Child Development

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To study effects of the gender-packaging of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) toys, mother-child dyads (31 daughters; 30 sons; M = 5.2 years) were randomly assigned to play with a mechanical toy packaged for girls (GoldieBlox) or boys (BobbyBlox). When familiarizing themselves with the toy to prepare for play, mothers given BobbyBlox built more with toy pieces than did mothers given GoldieBlox. During dyadic play, mothers with sons built more; mothers with daughters read the toy's narrative instructions more. Children's independent play likewise varied with game packaging. Girls learned the mechanical belt-drive principle better from playing with BobbyBlox; boys learned the principle better from playing with GoldieBlox. Implications for gender-schema theories, STEM interventions, and toy marketing are discussed.

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“…Strong gender stereotypes about toys have been associated with more gender-typed toy play in children ( Weisgram, 2016 ) and the degree of gender-typed play in preschool has been found to predict adolescents’ gender-typed occupational interests 10 years later ( Kung, 2021 ). No studies have been done yet, that directly link children’s gender stereotypes about toys to gendered visions of their future selves ( Fulcher and Coyle, 2018 ). However, the congruence principle of gender schema theories assumes that congruence exists between personal gender stereotypes and behaviors ( Martin and Dinella, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s Views About Their Future Career and Family Involvement: Associations With Children’s Gender Schemas and Parents’ Involvement in Work and Family Roles

Endendijk

Portengen

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Substantial gender disparities in career advancement are still apparent, for instance in the gender pay gap, the overrepresentation of women in parttime work, and the underrepresentation of women in managerial positions. Regarding the developmental origins of these gender disparities, the current study examined whether children’s views about future career and family involvement were associated with children’s own gender schemas (gender stereotypes, gender identity) and parents’ career- and family-related gender roles. Participants were 142 Dutch families with a child between the ages of 6 and 12 years old (M = 9.80, SD = 1.48, 60% girls). The families had different compositions (1 parent, 2 parents, 1 to 3 children). Children completed a computer task assessing gender stereotypes about toys and questionnaires on gender identity (i.e., felt similarity to same- and other-gender children) and their views about future career and family involvement. Parents reported their occupation, work hours, and task division in the home, which were combined in a composite variable reflecting gender-typicality of career and family involvement. Generalized estimation equations were used to take into account dependency between family members. Results revealed that parents’, and especially mothers’, gender-typical career and family involvement was associated with children’s gender-typical views about future career and family involvement. In addition, children’s felt similarity to the same gender was associated with children’s gender-typical expectations about career and family involvement. These findings suggest that parents’ career, work hours, and task division in the home, together play an important role in how their children envision their future work and family roles. Children themselves also play an active role in developing this vision for the future by their own gender identity, specifically by how similar they feel to individuals of the same gender. To reduce gender disparities in the occupational and domestic domain, programs need to be designed that focus on parental role modeling in the family as well as children’s gender identity development.

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Working at play: Gender-typed play and children’s visions of future work and family roles.

Cited by 5 publications

References 95 publications

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent–Child Interaction in Museums

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent–Child Interaction in Museums

Gendered Packaging of a STEM Toy Influences Children's Play, Mechanical Learning, and Mothers’ Play Guidance

Children’s Views About Their Future Career and Family Involvement: Associations With Children’s Gender Schemas and Parents’ Involvement in Work and Family Roles

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