THE RELATIONSHIP OF PLAY ACTIVITY AND GENDER TO PARENT AND CHILD SEX-TYPED COMMUNICATION

The influence of contextual factors on parent-child interactions, and the role of these factors in the incidence of gender differences in co mmunication, was examined. Twelve daughters and twelve sons (mean age = 43 months) visited a university laboratory on separate occasions, on ce with their mothers and once with their fathers. During both visits, the parent-child pair played with a relatively masculine-stereotyped toy set, oriented toward construction play (a take-apart car), and a r elatively feminine-stereotyped toy set, oriented toward social-dramati c play (props for a grocery store). Transcripts of the parent and chil d speech acts were coded while listening to audiotape recordings of th e interactions. The results indicated that the play activity, and not the speaker's gender, significantly affected both parents' and childre n's use of different speech acts. Parent gender was an additional pred ictor of children's speech. All of the significant effects had large e ffect sizes. The findings support theoretical models and other researc h reports that emphasise the importance of activity settings in the se x-typing process.