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A new study published in Sex Roles suggests that 8-year-old children’s views about women tend to mirror their parents’ sexist attitudes. Fathers’ hostile sexism and mothers’ benevolent sexism were most consistently linked to their children’s views, hinting that mothers and fathers may play different roles in passing these beliefs along.
Psychologists often divide sexism into two distinct categories: hostile and benevolent. Hostile sexism involves openly negative feelings toward women, particularly those who are perceived as challenging male power. Benevolent sexism is more subtle, as it involves idealizing women who conform to traditional gender roles and believing that they are delicate and require men’s protection.
Research suggests that benevolent sexism, despite its polite surface, can reinforce an unequal division of household labor and limit women’s career ambitions. Parents appear to be one source of children’s ideas about gender: a 2002 meta-analysis found that parents with more traditional views about gender tended to have children with more traditional views.
Studies of whether parents pass on hostile and benevolent sexism specifically have mostly involved teenagers. A 2012 study, for example, found that mothers who endorsed more benevolent sexism tended to have teenage daughters who did too. Some theorists had argued that benevolent sexism only emerges in adolescence, but a 2020 study co-authored by Hammond, which introduced the stuffed-toy task used in the new research, found that children as young as 5 already agree with both hostile and benevolent ideas about women.
Parental sexism may also show up in everyday interactions: research covered by PsyPost in 2023, led by Overall, found that mothers and fathers higher in hostile sexism were less responsive toward their young children during family interactions.
To build on this line of inquiry, researchers Oksana S. Voznyuk, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, Nickola C. Overall, a professor at the University of Auckland, and Matt Hammond, an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington, set out to test the direct intergenerational links between parents and children. They wanted to see if mothers’ and fathers’ specific sexist attitudes predict their children’s agreement with similar statements.
“In the big picture, we wanted to investigate why gender gaps persist worldwide, even as generations of women and men have been fighting for gender equality,” Voznyuk, Overall, and Hammond told PsyPost. “We thought that an overlooked process that may contribute to this slow progress toward gender equality could be the transmission of sexist beliefs intergenerationally – from parents to their children.”
The research team collected data from 175 family groups, each consisting of a mother, a father, and their 8-year-old child. The families lived in New Zealand and were part of a larger study that began when the children were 4 or 5. The children were fairly evenly split by gender, with 51 percent being girls and 49 percent being boys. Parents filled out standard questionnaires designed to measure their levels of hostile and benevolent sexism.
To assess the children’s attitudes, the researchers used a specially designed laboratory activity that young kids could easily understand. An experimenter introduced each child to a stuffed toy named Feppy, explaining that the toy was a visitor from far away. Feppy then made a series of statements about men and women.
Some of the toy’s statements reflected hostile sexism, such as saying that women get upset easily over jokes. Other statements reflected benevolent sexism, such as claiming that men need to protect women from danger. The children were asked to indicate whether Feppy was “sort of” or “really” right or wrong about each statement. On average, children rated Feppy’s hostile statements as sort of wrong and its benevolent statements as sort of right, and boys and girls gave similar answers.
When the researchers analyzed the responses, they found distinct patterns connecting the parents’ views to their children’s views. Because both parents’ attitudes were analyzed together, each link held even after accounting for the other parent’s views. Fathers who expressed higher levels of hostile sexism tended to have children who also agreed more strongly with hostile gender attitudes. This link was present regardless of whether the child was a boy or a girl.
A different pattern emerged for benevolent sexism. Mothers who endorsed benevolent sexist beliefs were more likely to have children who agreed with benevolent gender attitudes. Just like the link between fathers’ and children’s hostile views, this connection applied to both sons and daughters. Fathers’ benevolent sexism, by contrast, was not linked to their children’s benevolent attitudes.
The researchers also found that a mother’s hostile sexism was linked to her child’s views, but only for sons. The authors note the reason is unclear, but one possibility is that mothers higher in hostile sexism parent boys differently, for example by being more controlling with sons.
“The big takeaway from our findings is that children learn from the attitudes, behaviors, and everyday conversations they see at home, and the messages we send about expectations for women and men, or girls and boys, likely have a lasting impact,” the researchers noted. “This matters because those beliefs can shape everything from career opportunities to romantic relationships later in life.”
“One surprising outcome was that mothers and fathers may play unique roles in passing along sexist beliefs,” the researchers explained. “These differences may be about the roles that fathers and mothers play. Fathers who agree with hostile sexism believe that they should be the authority in the family, and they may use more controlling parenting behavior and express hostile sexism by behaving aggressively toward mothers. These behaviors can show children that men should have power and authority and therefore socialize children’s hostile gender beliefs.”
The authors suggest that mothers who endorse benevolent sexism might actively teach these values to their children, as these beliefs often appear socially acceptable or positive on the surface. “Mothers who agree with benevolent sexism may be more likely to hold traditional homemaker and caregiver roles,” the team added. “This may give them more opportunity to model and teach children ideas about protecting and valuing women who fit traditional expectations of what good girls and good women should be like.”
To ensure these links were not driven by other factors, the researchers adjusted their statistical models for the parents’ education levels, employment status, perceived socioeconomic status, and whether the mother or father was the primary caregiver. They also controlled for the children’s age and their “theory of mind,” which is the psychological term for a person’s ability to understand that other people have their own separate thoughts and feelings. Even with these adjustments, the connections between the parents’ and children’s sexist attitudes remained, and incidentally, parents’ hostile sexism was linked to lower theory-of-mind scores in children.
“The most important note is that this research is not about blaming parents, but about recognizing that we all play a role in transmitting and reinforcing gender beliefs,” the researchers emphasized. “Small changes may make an important difference. Many of us have internalized sexist attitudes to some extent, and often we don’t even know what they are, their impact, or how we display them. This research is a good reminder that the little things we say and do can shape how children think about women and men.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The links were modest: the correlation between fathers’ and children’s hostile attitudes, for example, was about 0.29, on a scale where 1 would mean a perfect match.
“As with most research about beliefs and attitudes, the effect size of parents’ sexist beliefs on children’s beliefs is relatively small,” the researchers pointed out. “Children are likely to have many experiences that contribute to their beliefs about women and men, but as children’s first and often most long-term role models, parents are likely to be particularly impactful influences in children’s development of sexist attitudes and an important intervention point.”
The study relies on observational data, meaning it cannot establish a direct cause and effect. There is also a possibility that children influence their parents’ views over time as they express their own ideas about gender. Additionally, the stuffed-toy task was developed with U.S. children, and one hostile item had to be dropped for poor fit with this New Zealand sample. All of the families were mother-father couples in New Zealand, so the patterns may differ in other family types and cultures.
Future research will need to explore these dynamics in single-parent households, families with LGBTQ+ parents, and across different cultural contexts.
“We believe two main directions are important for the next steps in this research,” the researchers said. “The first is to investigate whether children’s gender attitudes are related to negative outcomes for children’s wellbeing and their social, emotional and educational development.”
They suspect these attitudes could affect how children see themselves, how they do in school, and how they get along with peers. “The second is to investigate how parents are passing down their beliefs – are parents modeling traditional gender roles at home, treating sons and daughters differently, or shaping how children dress and behave in a way that communicates these gender beliefs?” they added.
The authors argue that because children’s early beliefs about gender may shape their later interests, schooling, and relationships, efforts to reduce gender stereotypes in childhood will likely need to engage parents as well as children.
The study, “Intergenerational Links Between Parents’ and Children’s Hostile and Benevolent Sexism,” was authored by Oksana S. Voznyuk, Nickola C. Overall, Matthew D. Hammond, Rachel S. T. Low, Annette M. E. Henderson, Valerie T. Chang, and Myfanwy Christensen.