Gender Attitudes In Children

In addition to this comparison from the past and present regarding the gender-role attitude, according to Eagly and Kite (1987) due to social changes in opportunity structures and constraining institutional arrangements, gender differences have decreased over time, having these stated as a factor that has an effect in gender-role attitude change.

Research on intergenerational transmission have followed either childhood socialization or social status models or a combination of the two (Moen, Erickson & Dempster-McClain, 1997), also, attitudes remain susceptible to change, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood, as individuals are exposed to new social influence (Fan & Manini, 2000). Any slight congruence in gender-role attitudes

It has been said that mothers’ gender-role attitude is more highly associated with daughter’s gender-role attitudes than with sons’ (Blair, 1992). An example of this is when an employed women themselves also having egalitarian gender-role attitudes than those who are not employed (Glass, 1992), likely to transmit these attitudes to their children, while children whose mothers are employed are directly exposed to a female model behaving in a way consistent with egalitarian gender roles, when they reach the age of deciding to conform or deviate from their parent’s gender role and gender-role attitude, a change from the next generation might occur (Fan & Marini, 2000). Another evidence was gathered from Scott, Alwin & Braun’s (1996) study, the succeeding generations show attitudes that are less traditional than those of their predecessors, although overall change is made up of intra cohort change in addition to cohort succession.

Through studying of Fan & Marini (2000) on the effects of different types of socializing influences in the family of origin and later in life, from a generation to the next one, they have identified the societal influences that produce a macro-level

This concept is based on the social-cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation (Bussey & Bandura, 1999), specifically the socio-cognitive modes of influence: modeling, enactive experience, and direct tuition. Through the exemplified modeling of parents and peers regarding gender-typed behavior, a great gender-related information is cognitively processed to an individual. Then by this processed information, they can develop gender orientations by observing the positive and negative consequences accompanying different patterns of behaviors, as an individual rely on their good judgment whether to do what was taught them or not. Finally, as they learn from modeling, and the new information undergone a cognitive process, they will now exhibit the learned model behaviour and knowledge on their selves and with their environment. In this regard, through modeling and socialization, gender-linked information is cognitively processed to an individual. Thus, parental and peer influence can be a predictor of an individual’s gender-role attitude in terms of traditional gender-role attitude, egalitarian gender-role attitude and anti-traditional gender-role