Participants were 150 school-age boys and girls, 58 high school students, and 145 university students drawn from communities in the Southeastern United States. In this cross-sectional study, family role attitudes and expectations were examined across development. Parental work traditionality (occupational prestige and traditionality, and employed hours) predicted daughters' social role attitudes and plans for future family roles, such that daughters' envisioned families resembled that of their parents. Sons' and daughters' own attitudes about adult family roles predicted their plans to work or stay home with their future children; however, mothers' work traditionality predicted daughters' future plans over and above daughters' own attitudes. The only exception to this was in the case of university daughters, where university women's attitudes about social roles fully mediated this relationship. It may be that, as young women approach adulthood and the formation of families, they adjust their vision of their future self to match more closely their own attitudes about the caregiving role.

No abstract

Gender schema theory (GST) posits that children approach opportunities perceived as gender appropriate, avoiding those deemed gender inappropriate, in turn affecting gender-differentiated career trajectories. To test the hypothesis that children's gender salience filters (GSF-tendency to attend to gender) moderate these processes, 62 preschool girls (M = 4.5 years) were given GSF measures. Two weeks later, they played a computer game about occupations that manipulated the game-character's femininity (hyperfeminized Barbie vs. less feminized Playmobil Jane). Following game play, girls' interests in feminine activities showed an interaction of game condition and GSF: High-GSF girls showed intensified feminine activity interests only with Barbie; low-GSF girls showed no change with either character. Neither GSF nor game condition affected occupational interests. Implications for GST, individual differences, and occupational interventions are discussed.

This study assessed college students' anticipated work-family conflict (family-impacting-work and workimpacting-family), and the family-altering and work-altering strategies they plan to employ to relieve that conflict. Undergraduates (N=121) from two universities in the southeastern U.S. were surveyed and differences between the genders were tested. There were no significant gender differences in total conflict, but women anticipated more family-impacting-work conflict, while men anticipated greater work-impacting family conflict. Women planned to employ conflict-relieving strategies more than men did, although the genders did not differ in the mean amount of conflict they anticipated. The type of conflict anticipated did not align with planning for the appropriate conflict-relieving strategy. Women varied in their employment plans while their children are too young for school, although most planned to have their first child by age 30, and to return to a highly prestigious career. Results indicate that emerging adults of both genders may not be realistically planning for their anticipated work-family conflict.

The evaluation of gender nonconformity in children was examined in two studies. In Study 1, 48 young adults evaluated the positivity of culturally popular labels for gender nonconformity, including "tomboy," "sissy," and two new labels generated in a pilot study, "mama's boy" and "brat." The "mama's boy" was described as a boy who has positive feminine traits (gentle and well-mannered) as opposed to the "sissy" who was described as having negative feminine traits (crying and easily frightened). In Study 2, 161 young adults read descriptions of gender-typical and nonconforming children, evaluating them in several domains. The label "mama's boy" was considered negative in Study 1 but an unlabeled positive nonconforming boy was rated as likable and competent in Study 2. However, participants worried about nonconforming boys, saying they would encourage them to behave differently and describing such children with derogatory sexual orientation slurs. "Tomboy" was generally considered a positive label in Study 1. In Study 2, gender nonconforming girls were considered neither likable nor dislikeable, and neither competent nor incompetent, reflecting ambivalence about girls' nonconformity. It may be that we use gender nonconformity labels as indicators of sexual orientation, even in young children. Therefore, even when an individual displays objectively positive traits, the stigma associated with homosexuality taints judgments about their nonconforming behavior.