Parents of firstborn male and female infants completed questionnaires concerning their perceptions of their infants. One question focused on how important it was for their children to become either very masculine or very feminine. It was predicted that the less parents stressed the importance of gender appropriateness, the less they would view…

Analyzes recent research on sex and gender in terms of (1) sex as a subject variable; (2) individual differences in masculinity, femininity, and androgyny; and (3) sex as a social category. Finds main effect differences of subject sex to be small, the status of androgyny uncertain, and the impact of gender stereotyping considerable. (CMG)

A study was undertaken to compare the relationship of the masculinity/femininity scale scores with age, sex, and acceptance of sex role stereotyping in 56 behaviorally disordered and 56 nonhandicapped adolescents (13 and 15 year olds). (PHR)

Claims that sexual battles are inevitably associated with radical "sexchanges," as well as with notably sexualized visions of change and exchange, in the lives and works of both literary women and men. Argues that this is the case because as sex roles change, sex (that is, eroticism) itself changes. (RAE)

Content analysis of children's Halloween costumes explored how children's fantasy dress reproduces and reiterates conventional gender messages. Both male and female costumes contained high proportions of heroes. Feminine costumes were clustered in a narrow range depicting traditional femininity, with higher proportions of animals and foodstuffs.…

Research on sex role concepts among young children found that: 1) the overlap children saw between male and female characteristics increased with age; 2) girls were less sex-typed than boys; 3) the realization that sex remains constant was associated with decreased sex typing; and 4) adults were seen in less sex-typed terms than peers. (Author/MJL)

Male and female college students described themselves and their ideal male and female with regard to sex-typed characteristics. Females described an androgynous model for themselves and their ideals. Males described an androgynous model for their self-portrayals but sex-typed portrayals for their ideals. (CMG)

Explores stereotypic thinking in relation to sex differences in personality. The 14 scales of Edwards Personality Inventory IA administered to 398 college student judges predict answer most men (women) would give. Results discussed. (Author/EK)

Based on the assumption that changes in female role expectations would result in reciprocal changes in perception of male roles, this study investigated differences in attitudes toward sex role differentiation betweens sons and fathers. The data supports the supposition that men are beginning to accept some re-arrangement of behavior patterns…

Research on gender stereotypes has contrasted males with females, describing males by competency traits and females by traits which denote warmth or emotionality. However, it has become clear that these traits do not satisfactorily describe all members of either sex, since not all men possess only masculine characteristics and not all women…

Two experiments examined toddlers' knowledge of the stereotyping of traditionally feminine and masculine household activities. Results suggest that knowledge about stereotyping adult activities starts to develop by the age of 24 months and common household activities are among the first gender-typed activities included in children's developing…

Explored the effects on college students' mood and body image of a negative versus positive outcome in an opposite-sex, competitive peer interaction. Used one gender-neutral and one gender stereotypical task. There were no gender differences in reactions to winning or losing gender-neutral competitions, except marginally for depression. The…

Bem's measures of Masculinity, Femininity, and the absolute value of her androgyny measure were analyzed by the principal-components method with the Masculinity-Femininity scales from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the California Psychological Inventory, the Omnibus Personality Inventory, and the Need for Heterosexuality scale of…

A study of sex-role identification partly confirmed two hypotheses: (1) the social relationships of late childhood have attributes which encourage the feminine stereotype rather than the masculine stereotype; and (2) children of both sexes who attest to masculine characteristics feel higher levels of discordance than those who attest to female…

This study investigated the relationship of psychological masculinity and feminity in children to trait stereotyping and toy preferences. Subjects (157 boys and 157 girls in Grades K-4) were tested on a Child Test Battery, including the Child's Personal Attributes Questionnaire based on the adult PAQ (Spence, Helmreich & Stapp, 1974, 1975),…