164 Chapter 5suggesting that the toy industry is targeting
boys with aggressive toys.TAKE HOME POINTS
■ Sources of gender-role socialization include parents,
teachers, peers, neighbors, and the media.
■ Averaging across studies, it appears that parents treat
sons and daughters in more similar than different ways.
■ One way parents treat girls and boys differently is in
providing sex-typed toys. The impact of that behavior is
still under investigation.
■ Parents also communicate differently with daughters
and sons, particularly with respect to emotion.
■ Differential treatment of boys and girls is more likely
to occur among younger than older children. With age,
parents respond to individual characteristics of the child
other than sex.
■ Because parents have the opportunity to acquire
individuating information about their children, it is
possible that other people (e.g., neighbors, peers)
and other things (e.g., television, books) are stronger
social agents in terms of gender-role socialization.
■ Girls and boys play with different toys. It is more ac-
ceptable for girls to play with stereotypical boy toys
than it is for boys to play with stereotypical girl toys. As
masculine toys have been found to have more educa-
tional value than feminine toys, the question is whether
the difference in boys’ and girls’ toys is related to sex
differences in cognition.
■ The presence of women has increased in all forms of
media—books, television, commercials. Females are
increasingly portrayed in nonstereotypical roles on tele-
vision and in books, but not at the expense of giving up
traditional roles.
■ Advertisements continue to depict women as sexual
objects and often depict women and men in traditional
roles.front such as “Do I Make You Look Fat?” and
“Who Needs Brains When You Have These?”
The girls’ advocacy and subsequent media
attention (including an appearance on the
Today Show) led to a meeting with Abercrom-
bie & Fitch, during which they successfully
persuaded the company to remove some of
these T-shirts. In 2006, the girls were honored
at a conference of the National Organization
for Women (Women and Girls Foundation,
2006). I’m sure many of you have had the
occasion to hear your parents say “not while
you are living under my roof.” This phrase
came in handy when my daughter asked why
we couldn’t shop at this store.
Boys and girls are also shown in tradi-
tional roles in commercials directed toward
children: Boys appear aggressive, dominant,
and active, whereas girls appear shy, giggling,
and deferent (Browne, 1998). The most sex
segregation occurs in children’s toy advertise-
ments. In an analysis of such advertisements
in the United States and Australia, no com-
mercials depicted girls playing with traditional
“boy toys” such as trucks, and no commercials
depicted boys playing with traditional “girl
toys” such as dolls. This is unfortunate be-
cause there is evidence that toy commercials
influence how children view toys. In a study
of first and second graders, children were
shown either a traditional toy commercial
(i.e., boy playing with a stereotypical boy toy)
or a nontraditional toy commercial (i.e., girl
playing with a stereotypical boy toy) and were
later asked to sort the toys into those that are
for boys, for girls, and for both boys and girls
(Pike & Jennings, 2005). Children exposed
to the nontraditional commercial were more
likely to classify toys as for both boys and girls.
In addition, commercials that feature boys or
masculine toys are perceived as more aggres-
sive (Klinger, Hamilton, & Cantrell, 2001),M05_HELG0185_04_SE_C05.indd 164 6/21/11 8:03 AM