The surgeon is the mother; the role of implicit gender stereotypes of children and their parents on the professional interests of children.

Children grow up in a world full of consciously, explicit and unconsciously, implicit gender stereotypes. This thesis focusses on de implicit stereotypes of children and their parents. Children are influenced by implicit stereotypes by constantly being exposed to these in society, in schools or by their parents. By unconsciously expressing these implicit stereotypes, parents influence the interests, and thus the professional interests, of their children. This study, with a cross-sectional design, examined whether children's implicit gender stereotypes mediates the relationship between parents' implicit gender stereotypes and gender stereotyped occupational interests. 100 Dutch families were visited at home for this study. The data of 100 children, 99 mothers and 98 fathers was used for the mediation analysis. All of the children were 11 or 12 years old and were the second child in the family. To research the implicit gender stereotypes, the arts-science version of the Implicit...Show moreChildren grow up in a world full of consciously, explicit and unconsciously, implicit gender stereotypes. This thesis focusses on de implicit stereotypes of children and their parents. Children are influenced by implicit stereotypes by constantly being exposed to these in society, in schools or by their parents. By unconsciously expressing these implicit stereotypes, parents influence the interests, and thus the professional interests, of their children. This study, with a cross-sectional design, examined whether children's implicit gender stereotypes mediates the relationship between parents' implicit gender stereotypes and gender stereotyped occupational interests. 100 Dutch families were visited at home for this study. The data of 100 children, 99 mothers and 98 fathers was used for the mediation analysis. All of the children were 11 or 12 years old and were the second child in the family. To research the implicit gender stereotypes, the arts-science version of the Implicit Association Test was conducted on both parents and the child. In addition, the children were asked about their stereotyped occupational interests using a Dutch version of the Occupation, Activity, Traits – PM. The main analysis consisted of a mediation analysis using the causal steps method of Baron and Kenny (1986). And both the mother’s and the father’s stereotypes were examined separately. The regression analyses showed that parental stereotypes did not predict the professional interests of children (hypothesis 1). Also, no relation was found between the implicit stereotypes of parent and child (hypothesis 2). Furthermore, the children implicit stereotypes did not predict the children’s professional interests (hypothesis 3). Therefore, the conclusion of this thesis is that parents don’t seem to affect their children professional interests with their implicit stereotypes about gender (hypothesis 4). Implications for this research could be that we need more insight about how the communication between parent and child occurs.Show less

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The surgeon is the mother; the role of implicit gender stereotypes of children and their parents on the professional interests of children.