The Impact of Family and Community on Children’s Understanding of Parental Role Negotiation

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of family context and community context on children’s social reasoning about parental negotiation of the gendered roles of breadwinner and caretaker. Participants included 272 seven- and ten-year-old children from traditional and nontraditional parental employment situations, who lived in either a U.S. east coast metropolitan area or in a military-minded community. Children provided judgments and justifications about a parent’s desire to switch roles, the other parent’s opposition, and the use of stereotypes to defend their opposition. Children’s judgments were affected by the gender of parent wanting a new role, age of child, and both personal contexts. The current study provides evidence that children, not just adults, are aware of, and can reason about, parental roles and that it is important to investigate community norms in addition to direct family contexts.