Male and female college students were administered the Berzins-Welling ANDRO scale, a measure of psychological androgyny, and the Parent Behavior Form (PBF) in a counterbalanced design. Subjects of each gender were classified into one of four sex role categories: masculine typed, feminine typed, androgynous, or indeterminate. Parent scale differences indicated that reported parental affection principally differentiates male groups, whereas parental cognitive or achievement encouragement and permissiveness differentiate female sex role categories. Indetcrminates consistently reported the least parental warmth and cognitive involvement, whereas androgynous subjects generally reported the highest. The results indicate that new conceptualizations of sex role orientations, which consider masculine and feminine characteristics to be independent, uncorrelated dimensions, are distinctively related to reported parental child-rearing practices.Recent efforts have been directed toward an assessment of the degree to which individuals endorse culturally sex-typed statements about themselves (Bern, 1974;Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975; Berzins, Welling, & Wetter, Note 1). Since males are culturally expected to behave in an "instrumental" (Johnson, 1963), more goal-directed, dominant, cognitive and socially ascendant manner, the endorsement of these characteristics about oneself has been taken as an index of masculinity. On the other hand, traditional feminine sex roles involve "expressive" (Johnson, 1963), emotional, sensitive, supportive, and noncompetitive components. Even though males or females may be "typed" as masculine or feminine, it has recently been suggested (Bern, 1974;Constantinople, 1973;Spence et al., 1975; Berzins, Note 2) that masculinity and femininity do not represent the bipolar ends of a single continuum but instead are independent, uncorrelated dimensions. Thus, it is
