Gender stereotype conformity and age as determinants of preschoolers’ injury-risk behaviors

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Abstract

Unintentional injuries continue to be a serious public-health problem for children and are higher for boys than for girls, from infancy through adulthood. Literature on differential socialization concerning risky behaviors and gender stereotypes suggests that sex differences in unintentional injuries could be explained by children's differential feedback to social pressure, leading to behaviors which conform to masculine and feminine stereotypes. We made the prediction that boys’ and girls’ conformity with masculine stereotypes influences injury-risk behaviors among preschoolers. Masculinity score, femininity score, and injury-risk behaviors of 170 3–6-year old children (89 boys and 81 girls) were measured indirectly on two scales filled out by their parents. Results show that boys’ and girls’ injury-risk behaviors are predicted by masculine stereotype conformity and that girls’ masculine behaviors decline with increasing age. These results underline the impact of gender-roles – and of the differential socialization associated with those roles – on sex differences in children's risky behaviors as early as the preschool period.

Introduction

Unintentional injuries continue to be a serious public-health problem for children in developed countries (Baker et al., 1992), where death following injury is much more common for boys than for girls. Accidents involving boys are more frequent and more serious than those involving girls (Baker et al., 1992, Rivara et al., 1982, Rivara and Mueller, 1987). Some studies have already pointed out male gender as a predictor of injury between 6- and 36-months old (Schwebel et al., 2004). In developed countries, boys between the ages of 1 and 14 have a 70% higher probability of dying in an accident than do girls (UNICEF, 2001) and this difference persists into adulthood (Baker et al., 1992, Rivara et al., 1982).

The type and location of injuries also vary with children's age (Shannon et al., 1992). For example, injuries to infants often occur at home, whereas most injuries to school-age children happen when they are away from home and engage in risk-taking activities. Injury rates are often reported to increase with age throughout the school years, with adolescents experiencing the highest incidence of injuries (Scheidt et al., 1994). At the age of 2–2.5, boys were injured most often in rooms designated for play, and a majority of their injuries followed misbehavior, whereas girls were most often injured in non-play areas of the home, with the majority of injuries occurring during play activities (Morrongiello et al., 2004). Boys experienced more frequent and severe injuries than girls, although girls reacted more than boys to their injuries. Moreover, parental measurements of children's sensation-seeking and children's compliance show that girls were less sensation-seeking and more compliant than boys and that these two factors are correlated with injury-risk behaviors (Morrongiello et al., 2004). Nevertheless, preschoolers older than 2.5 years were at higher risk of injury than younger ones (Dal Santo et al., 2004). Children's injury-risk increases sharply, with a peak occurring between 2 and 4 years of age (Matheny, 1987). At 5 years of age, a study on environmental factors in the risk of unintentional injuries on 2054 twins shows that being male was the main risk factor for injuries (Ordonana et al., 2008).

Previous research has shown that school-age boys tend to take more risks than girls (Byrnes et al., 1999, Coppens and Gentry, 1991, Ginsburg and Miller, 1982, Granié, 2007, Morrongiello and Dawber, 1999, Rosen and Peterson, 1990) and have more frequent and severe injuries than girls (Baker et al., 1992, Canadian Institute of Child Health, 1994). In addition, when boys and girls are involved in the same types of activities, boys exhibit more risky behaviors than girls (Morrongiello and Dawber, 1998, Rivara et al., 1982, Van der Molen, 1981, Van der Molen, 1983). Boys were as accurate and as quick to assess risk as girls: gender difference showed up in absolute but not in relative danger appraisals. Rating for vulnerability (in “will I get hurt” terms) is the best predictor of girls’ risk rating whereas boys’ risk rating is best predicted by injury severity (in “how hurt will I get” terms) (Hillier and Morrongiello, 1998). Boys reported more injuries than girls and perceived them as less severe (Morrongiello, 1997). School-age boys attributed more injuries to bad luck, rated risk of injury as lower, and expressed more of an optimism bias than girls (Morrongiello and Rennie, 1998).

Boys’ tendency to take more risks has been generally explained in the past by a combination of biological and evolutionary theories. Thus, the classic explanation is that the tendency to take risks varies with the level of androgen produced by the body: men have a higher level of sensation-seeking and take more risks because they produce more androgens (Social Issues Research Centre, 2004, Zuckerman, 1991). Evolutionary psychology (Daly and Wilson, 1987) argues that men's risk-taking, such as aggression and “infidelity”, are the natural consequences of the basic requirements of community protection and gene dissemination. Only recently has research begun to explore social environment influences on children's sex differences in risk-taking behaviors. Thus, a growing number of studies have shown that parents contribute to the sex differences found in children's risk-taking and unintentional injuries (Hagan and Kuebli, 2007, Morrongiello and Dawber, 1999, Morrongiello and Dawber, 2000, Morrongiello and Hogg, 2004), as parents contribute to gender identity development and gender-role learning (Bussey and Bandura, 1999) by gender differential socialization (Block, 1983, McHale et al., 2003).

Numerous psychologists indeed ascribe the male–female difference in risk-taking to gender-roles (Byrnes et al., 1999, d’Acremont and Van der Linden, 2006, Rowe et al., 2004). Gender-roles can be defined as expectations about behavior that are generated by the social group and depend upon the gender group to which the individual belongs (Basow, 1992). In line with this, studies on parental behavior have shown that boys and girls are treated differently by their parents at a very early age (Fagot, 1995). Girls are encouraged to be nurturing and polite. In contrast, boys are encouraged to be autonomous, adventuresome and independent (Huston, 1983, Pomerantz and Ruble, 1998, Zahn-Waxler et al., 1991). Gender-role socialization is based on gender stereotypes, which can be defined as the set of beliefs about what it means to be a male or a female in terms of physical appearance, attitudes, interests, psychological traits, social relationships, and occupations (Ashmore et al., 1986, Deaux and Lewis, 1984). In particular, gender stereotypes about risk-taking characterize it as a typically masculine type of behavior (Bem, 1981, Morrongiello and Hogg, 2004). This interpretation is consistent with gender norms about risk-taking (Yagil, 1998). For example, by the age of 6, children already have differential beliefs about injury vulnerability for boys and girls. Children rate girls as having a greater risk of injury than boys, although boys routinely experience more injuries than girls (Morrongiello et al., 2000). Among adolescents, drinking and driving is seen to be more acceptable for boys than for girls (Rienzi et al., 1996), and males are subject to less supervision than females (Parker et al., 1992). However, complying with certain male-stereotyped traits does not mean complying with all the components of masculinity, or even not complying with certain feminine traits (Bem, 1974, Bem, 1981). Accordingly, conformity to gender stereotypes can provide an explanation for both inter-group and intra-group differences in involvement in injury-risk behaviors. It was not until recently studies have demonstrated the impact of gender stereotypes on risk-taking, driving style, and road accidents among adolescents and adults (Granié, 2009, Özkan and Lajunen, 2006, Raithel, 2003), gender stereotype conformity appearing as a better predictor of risk-taking than age or sex.

However, the role of gender stereotypes in children's injury-risk behavior is not well known. Past research suggests that parents display a differential treatment of injury-risk behaviors according to the child's sex (Morrongiello and Dawber, 1999, Morrongiello and Dawber, 2000), and research has also shown that boys engage in riskier behaviors than girls even as toddlers and preschoolers (Hillier and Morrongiello, 1998, Morrongiello et al., 2000). To fully understand how gender differences emerge in injury-risk behaviors, it is critical that gender-role development in risk-taking be examined.

Under social pressure, individuals have a tendency to build their identity as gendered beings by positioning themselves with respect to gender stereotypes. Research based on social-cognitive theories of gender development (Bussey and Bandura, 1999) shows that children act with respect to gender-linked stereotypes before fully knowing the gender stereotypes. From external pressure and sanctions, the regulation of behaviors shifts to internal sanctions based on personal standards. Thus, while 3-year old children behave in a gender stereotypic manner to peers’ cross-gender-typed behavior but do not regulate their own behavior, 4-year old children display self-regulatory guidance based on personal standards (Bussey and Bandura, 1992).

Along these lines, the goal of this study was to detect the differential effects of male and female gender stereotype conformity on risk-taking in preschoolers. Differential socialization starting at a very young age, along with the influence of gender-roles on risk-taking, suggests that observable differences among children can be partly explained by compliance with social pressures dictating stereotype adherence. Differing conformity to gender stereotypes thus allows us to predict sex differences in risk-taking. In line with the few earlier studies (Granié, 2009, Özkan and Lajunen, 2006, Raithel, 2003), we predict that male gender-role conformity as specified by the parents has an effect on injury-risk behaviors as specified by the parents among preschool children, not only boys but also girls. And, in line with social-cognitive theories of gender-role development (Bussey and Bandura, 1999), we predict that sex differences in preschoolers’ risk-taking will increase with age as boys’ conformity to gender-linked stereotypes increases.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

The participants were 170 preschool children (89 boys and 81 girls) from the same suburb of Paris (France). For studying the age effect on the relationship between risky behaviors and gender stereotype conformity, four age groups were selected: 3-year olds, 4-year olds, 5-year olds and 6-year olds. The sample size, the age mean and standard deviation, and the number of boys and girls in each group are summarized in Table 1.

The 170 parents who answered the questionnaires (16 men and 154 women)

Tool validation

PSAI with orthogonal Varimax solution explained 47.7% of the total variance, before removal of two feminine items, with the two following identified factors with eigenvalue <1: feminine factors contributing to 37.1% of the total variance; masculine 10.6%. Eighteen items on 20 were intended to assess a particular trigger subscale loaded on the corresponding subscale with factor loadings of >.41. Nevertheless, two feminine items with factor loadings of <.40 (“not liking to get dirty” and “not

Discussion and conclusion

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the effects of conformity to gender stereotypes on injury-risk behaviors among preschool children. The results indicated that gender stereotype conformity did indeed affect risk-taking among these preschool children. The initial hypothesis of an effect of male gender-role conformity as specified by the parents on injury-risk behaviors as specified by the parents, was confirmed among preschool children, not only boys but also girls. More specifically,

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Road Traffic and Safety Department of the French Ministry of Transport under the program of research, experimentation and innovation in land transport (PREDIT). We extend our sincere thanks to the parents for their enthusiastic participation.

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