The role of gender stereotypes in maternal attitudes and reactions to children's prosocial, nonsocial, and antisocial behaviours

The current study investigated the role of mothers' gender role attitudes in their emotional and behavioural responses to their children's physical aggression, shyness, affiliative prosocial and agentic prosocial behaviours. The sample included 78 mothers of preschool-aged children (43 girls, 35 boys; 27-72 mo.; Mage = 47.44 mo., SD = 11.00 mo.). Mothers provided reports of their gender-role attitudes and rated their reactions to hypothetical vignettes depicting the four child behaviours. Results indicated that mothers with more traditional gender role attitudes responded with fewer positive emotions and more immediate intervention to shyness in boys than did egalitarian mothers. Mothers also anticipated more problems for aggressive boys than girls. Results are discussed in terms of the social acceptability and potential implications of these behaviours in boys and girls.