Abstract: | The study examined similarities and differences between sex-role orientations of college students and their same-sex parents. College undergraduates filled out the Bem Sex-role Inventory twice: once to describe themselves and the second time to describe their same-sex parents. The inventory was also used to obtain parental self-reports. Compared to their perceptions of their same-sex parents, male students described themselves as more feminine and female students described themselves as more masculine. Also, male students described their fathers as less feminine and female students described their mothers as both less masculine and less feminine than the parents described themselves. Students' femininity scores correlated significantly with the parental femininity scores both actual and perceived, however, no consistent relationship was found for the masculinity scores. Androgynous students and students with the reversed sex-role orientation perceived their parents as androgynous and reversed, respectively. |