Feminine gender role behavior and academic achievement: Their relation in a community sample of middle childhood boys

Previous studies on the relationship between gender role behavior and academic achievement and/or cognitive abilities in boys have led to somewhat conflicting hypotheses. The present study extends these hypotheses to a broadly representative school-based sample of boys (ages 6–10 years) and asks whether feminine and/or masculine gender role behavior is associated with lower academic achievement in general as well as specifically in math, and whether these relationships increase with age. The parents of 333 boys (74% of the eligible sample) who attended one public school system in northern New Jersey agreed to participate. The survey included two psychometrically robust gender role behavior questionnaires as well as the Child Behavior Checklist, which contains a scale concerned with school achievement, all based on parental report. In addition, the results of the routinely school-administered California Achievement Tests were analyzed. The results only weakly and somewhat inconsistently supported the hypotheses. We conclude that variations of gender role behavior as seen in a school-based sample are only marginally correlated with school achievement. The correlation patterns vary with the aspect of gender role behavior—masculinity, femininity—under investigation and with age.We wish to thank the children and parents who participated in the study. We also acknowledge the secretarial assistance of William Tallmadge. This research was conducted while David Sandberg was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University and funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Research Service Award HD06726). In addition, this work was supported in part by grants to Drs. Ehrhardt and Meyer-Bahlburg from the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, and by NIMH Clinical Research Center Grant MH-30906, and NIMH Research Grant MH-34635.