Parental Endorsement of Math Stereotypes

Parents play a large role in their children’s lives, especially when they are as young as 5-7 years old. Thus, it’s a valid point to question how parental endorsements of certain stereotypes transfer to their children.  Let’s face it, mothers are usually the ones to buy clothing for their children especially when they are young, so what kind of message are they sending their daughter when they buy them clothes such as those pictured above?

Tomasetto, Alparone & Cadinu (2011) studied the relationship between parental endorsement of the math-gender stereotype and their daughter’s susceptibility to the stereotype threat. Their study consisted of 156 Caucasian female school students from middle-class families and their parent. Girls ranged in grade from Kindergarten to 2^nd grade. Children were split up into two conditions, the control and the stereotype threat condition. Children in both groups were asked to listen to a story so that they could draw a picture of it after they heard it. Those in the control group heard a story that described a fairy tale landscape with no actual animated characters. Those in the stereotype threat group heard a story that made gender identity salient, telling about a girl with traits that are stereotypically feminine in the children’s mind. After they heard the story, children in both groups drew a picture which remained on the desk in front of them for the remainder of the experiment. Participants then completed an age-appropriate math ability test.

In the meantime, parents answered a questionnaire that included two questions to help researchers measure their acceptance of traditional gender stereotypes regarding math. The children’s teachers also rated their prior achievement in math on a scale from 1 to 5.

Tomasetto, Alparone & Cadinu (2011) used a hierarchical regression to test whether children’s math performance varied as a function of condition and parent’s endorsement of gender stereotypes. Within the children in the stereotype threat group, they found that the math performance of girls whose mothers endorsed the gender stereotype suffered greatly under the stereotype threat, while that of girls whose mothers strongly rejected the gender stereotype did not suffer under the stereotype threat. When looking at overall performance between the control and experimental group, they found that girls’ performance declined after gender identity was made salient. It is also important to recognize that performance decrements were found only in girls whose mothers did not reject the gender stereotype. Therefore, we can assume that girls whose mothers were indifferent to the stereotype would also fall victim to the stereotype threat.

These results are significant because not only do they express yet another incidence of how the stereotype threat plays a role in girls math performance, but it shows us a way to help protect girls from the stereotype threat.

Reference:

Tomasetto, C., Alparone, F., & Cadinu, M. (2011). Girls' math performance under stereotype threat: The moderating role of mothers' gender stereotypes. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 943-949