The Child Gender Socialization Scale: A Measure to Compare Traditional and Feminist Parents

This paper presents four studies conducted to develop a measure of parents’ attitudes about gendered behaviors in their children. Participants were US college students and community residents. It was expected that scores on the measure would distinguish between parents of sons and daughters, and between parents with traditional and feminist beliefs. To begin, we created a self-report questionnaire consisting of ratings of 84 gender-related behaviors, characteristics, and educational and occupational aspirations for children. Based on factor analysis and other analyses of scale scores to refine the measure, our final measure has 28 items on five scales. In keeping with expectations, the five scales consistently differentiated between boys and girls and/or traditional and feminist parents.