Running head: EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGESS
Effect of Gender on Paternal Willingness for Sport Participation
Rachel Ionta
East Carolina University
1
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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Effect of Gender on Paternal Willingness for Sport Participation
The effect gender has on an individual has been an area of interest for psychologists since
the founding of the discipline. The past few decades have led to a decrease in traditional
attitudes towards gender roles, but gender gaps have not been eliminated (Valentova, 2012). The
gender classification system goes beyond affecting the individual to influencing interactions and
relationships between individuals and social institutions (Joel & Yarimi, 2014). Multiple factors
lead to an individual’s internal concepts of what it means to be a man or a woman. The presence
and strength of stereotypical perceptions held by the parents of a child have been positively
associated with the gender stereotypes the child develops and adheres to (Bioche, Plaza,
Chalabaev, Guillet-Descas, & Sarrazin, 2014). These parental influences of gender stereotypes
can be reflected in the child’s perception of athletic opportunities and abilities of members both
genders.
The global phenomenon of unequal treatment of females in male dominated sports has
been well-researched. Gilenstam, Karp, and Henriksson-Larsen (2007) examined the different
views people in Sweden had of male and female ice hockey players. Their research revealed that
the image most people had of an ice hockey player was a masculine, powerful, and strong man.
When thinking of a female ice hockey player, an emotional and less ambitious woman with a
probable homosexual sexual orientation resulted. Adolescent girls from Australia provide
another example of the different views of male and female athletes. When asked to describe a
list of characteristics of male and female athletes, the men were described as strong, muscular,
and healthy while the women received descriptors of pretty, long haired, and respectful
(Adriaanse & Crosswhite, 2008). An automatic superiority and societal acceptation is given to
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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many male athletes and their athletic characteristics and traits. These studies suggest that male
athletes are more supported and endorsed by societies worldwide than female athletes.
Specific sports themselves have been classified as masculine, feminine, or genderneutral. Contact, use of force, and competitive spirit are several of the attributes masculine
sports are thought to include (Hardin & Greer, 2009). Competitiveness is arguably a desirable
trait for any athlete because the goal of any game, meet, or match is to win. Additionally, the
amount of contact in a sport is determined by the design of the sport itself, not by the players.
Even since Title IX, an educational amendment that prohibits sex discrimination in education
and athletic programs that receive federal financial assistance was passed in the early 1970s,
most sports are still considered masculine. Participating in those masculine-categorized sports
both require and result in unhealthy changes to the female body. Gender norms and cultural
expectations of female personality and body characteristics can be contradictory to those of an
athletic body (Steinfeldt, Zakrajsek, Carter, & Steinfeldt, 2011). Balancing the characteristics
necessary for females to compete in the masculine realm of sports can be detrimental to a
woman’s physical and psychological health and well-being.
Playing or participating in sports, regardless of the feminine or masculine categorization,
can have significant implications for adolescents’ well-being. A lack of physical activity has the
potential to result in various health problems including Type-2 Diabetes, various forms of
cancer, and heart problems (Bioche et al., 2014). Athletic participation also influences social
development. Bioche et al. (2014) described sport participation as having a positive influence on
youth development and peer relationships, improving academic functioning, and preventing the
potentially sexual objectification of girls.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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In addition to the sport influence on sociality, maternal sensitivity has been proven to
have a bidirectional relationship with a child’s prosocial behavior as both the parent and child
co-determine the social environment in which the child grows up in (Newton, Carlo, Laible,
Steele, & McGinley, 2014). Not as much research has been done to study the paternal influence
on children let alone paternal influence when it comes to sports and athletics. Stereotypically,
fathers are more zealous fans of sports of all types and at various levels and more often the coach
their child’s athletic team(s). Mothers, on the other hand, have been shown to display more
athletic ability beliefs in their sons than their daughters if they see sports as a masculine realm
(Bioche et al., 2014). As children are too young to pay for or decide if they are allowed to sign
up for an extracurricular or athletic activity, the results of this study suggest that there might be a
group of children not participating in sports, in general or a specific sport, due to parental
prevention.
While plentiful research has examined the difficulties women have faced while breaking
into the masculine culture of sports, there is limited information related to male participation in
traditionally and predominantly female sports. Although women have faced numerous
challenges in the realm of traditionally masculine sports, they have managed to participate in
almost every one. However, males have not broken away from their traditionally genderaccepted sports even though society views their gender as athletically superior. A partial
explanation for this one-way shift is the recent promotion of traditionally masculine sports in the
United States to help guarantee that boys will learn what it is like to be a rough-and-tough man’s
man even if there are extraneous cultural influences that threaten these historical notions of the
male gender (Steinfeldt, Zakrajsek, Carter, & Steinfeldt, 2011).
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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While the popularity of adolescent sports is increasing in the United States and
internationally, there is a lack of research on parental views of sport participation. The purpose
of this study is to look at the willingness of fathers to allow their children to participate in
traditionally boy sports (TBS; masculine sports) and traditionally female sports (TGS; feminine
sports). The TBS explored in this study will be football, baseball, hockey, and wrestling while
the TGS are dance, gymnastics, cheerleading and softball. There will be four questionnaires
distributed to fathers of grammar school children on which they will rate the likelihood that they
would allow or encourage their son or daughter to participate in TBS or TGS. I hypothesize that
fathers will be less willing to sign their son up for TGS than they would be to sign up their
daughters for TBS.
Method
Design
A two by two between subjects design structure will be used in which there are two
independent variables with two levels each. The two independent variables in this experiment
are the gender of the child and the gender specific sport(s) the father is being questioned about.
The gender of the child is either male or female. The gender specific sports are either considered
traditionally boy sports (TBS; masculine sports; football, baseball, hockey, and wrestling) or
traditionally girl sports (TGS; feminine sports; dance, gymnastics, cheerleading, and softball).
The four questionnaires will analyze the effects the child’s gender has on the father’s
decision to allow or not allow their son(s) or daughter(s) to participate in traditionally gendertyped sports. The self-reported paternal willingness is the dependent variable of interest in this
experiment.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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Participants
All of the participants in this study will be fathers who have at least one son and one
daughter. Participants will be reminded that participation is voluntary. A list will be obtained
from four Greenville elementary schools (Creekside, Lakeforest, Eastern, and Elmhurst
Elementary) that contained all the 3-5th grade students who had siblings of elementary school
age. From there the list will be narrowed to only those students who had at least one sibling of
the opposite sex. The names on that narrowed list will be thrown into a hat and 32 random
families (fathers) chosen from each of the four elementary schools to participate in this study.
There will be an even distribution of each survey between schools (32 total; 8 of each). So, in
total, 128 fathers (N=128) with at least one son and one daughter whose children attend one of
the four Greenville elementary schools listed above will participate in this study.
Materials
Four questionnaires will be used, copies of which are included in Appendix A.
Participants will be asked to rate their willingness to allow their son or daughter to participate in
a TBS or TGS on a 1-5 Likert-type scale (1—I would definitely not sign them up, 3—I would
consider it, & 5—I would absolutely sign them up). Each of the four questionnaires has one set
of four questions about paternal willingness to allow their child to play TBS or TGS; son to play
TBS (i.e. “How willing would you be to let your son sign up for football?”), son to play TGS
(i.e. “How willing would you be to let your son sign up for dance?”), daughter to play TBS (i.e.
“How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for football?”), or daughter to play TGS
(i.e. “How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for dance?”). TBS are identified as
football, baseball, hockey, and wrestling. TGS are identified as dance, gymnastics, cheerleading,
and softball.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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The vignettes at the top of the four surveys are the same except for the gender of the
child. In the vignettes, the letter is addressed to parents and it is stated that the town is doing an
analysis to see if there are enough extracurricular or sports activities being offered for 5-10 year
old to participate in. The deception in this vignette is being used to help prevent participants
from being able to figure out, guess, or question the intentions of the surveys. A follow-up letter
will be sent to all of the participants who submitted their completed survey debriefing them on
the deception within the vignette, why it was necessary, and what the survey was actually being
used to analyze.
Procedure
After narrowing down participants, the surveys will be mailed to addresses the schools
had on record for paternal residency. In total, 128 surveys are to be mailed out on Monday
October 20th, 2014 with a return envelope that included postage and a return address label. Each
father will be randomly sent one of the four surveys. The fathers will be instructed to fill out the
questionnaire and put it in the mail by the 30th of October 2014.
At the top of every questionnaire the participants are notified that their participation in
this study is completely voluntary. Although the questionnaires are mailed to their homes,
participant’s completion of the surveys is done in the location and at the time of their choice
within the October 20th and 30th time frame. Once the participants read the voluntary disclosure
and decide to complete the questionnaires they will read a vignette followed by four questions
concentrating on one gender and one gender-typed set of sports. A follow-up letter will be sent
to all of the participants who submitted their completed survey debriefing them on the deception
within the vignette, why it was necessary, and what the survey was actually being used to
analyze.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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The responses to the four questions will be individually rated on a 1-5 Likert-like scale
(1— I would definitely not sign them up; 3— I would consider it; 5— I would absolutely sign
them up).
Results
A pilot test was conducted with 19 undergraduates. A repeated measures ANOVA was
performed to examine the relationships between the variables. First, the main effect of gender
was examined. Participant’s willingness to allow their sons to participate in a sport was higher
(M = 4.1) than their willingness to allow their daughters to participate in a sport (M = 3.66). The
difference between these two values was not significant, F (1, 19) = 1.40, p = .25. Secondly, the
main effect of type of sport was examined. Participant’s willingness to allow their child to
participate in TBS was lower (M = 3.6) than their willingness to allow their child to participate in
TGS (M = 4.17). The difference between these two values was not significant, F (1, 19) = 2.4, p
= .14. There was a significant interaction between the gender of the child and the type of sport,
F (1, 19) = 4.395, p = .05.
There were no main effects for either of the two independent variables but there was an
interaction effect. This means that alone, neither the gender of the child nor the type of sport had
an impact on the participant’s willingness to allow their child to participate in sports. When a
child wants to participate in a sport that is not one of their gender’s traditional sports, the
participant’s willingness decreased and vice versa. Put more simply, these results show that
participants are more accepting of their child adhering to his or her traditional gender role than
him or her break it.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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Discussion
The results of the pilot test do not support the hypothesis that fathers will be less willing
to sign their son up for TGS than they would be to sign their daughters up for TBS. Nonetheless,
the results do support the idea that the paternal willingness to allow a child to participate in a
sport does vary based on the amalgamation of the child’s gender and the traditionally gendered
sport of interest.
There are multiple reasons the results of this study did not support the hypothesis. First,
the sample size used in this pilot test was much smaller than the intended sample. Secondly, the
sample population was comprised of all undergraduate psychology students of both genders who,
presumably, do not have children of their own. The hypothesis for this study was heavily based
on having fathers with a child of each gender participating. In the future, the sample size and
population should be corrected.
Additional factors that influenced the results may have included the perceptions the
participants had of the chosen sports. Although not analyzed, there appeared to be a trend for the
participants to be less willing to sign their child up for hockey and wrestling. Participants may
have had a preconception of these sports as more violent or aggressive than others. The level of
violence/aggression, participants past experience with a sport(s), and how “manly” or “girly” a
sport is thought to be are all possible influences on the survey results. The degree to which these
theoretical factors influence participants’ responses will vary on a person-to-person basis. A
large sample size will help to lessen the weight of one or two participants’ outlying perceptions,
experiences, and responses on the total results. It is expected that some of the participants will
elect not to or be unable to complete this survey due to non-involvement with their children,
incarceration, or various other reasons.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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This study implies that there are still gender role expectations and differences present in
the minds of young American adults. The applied implications of these results suggest that there
is room for improvement in eliminating gender role expectations and differences. Whether these
participants were or are aware of the gender biases and expectations is unknown however
Awareness is the first step in overcoming the tunnel vision that is gender roles. This could help
with national issues like equal pay for equal work or even daily assumptions by individuals that a
person’s gender influences their ability to do their job (i.e. a male doctor or lawyer is better at his
job than a female or a female teacher or nurse is better at hers than a male). Future research done
on this topic will show further implications of these biases and further display the presence of
these biases in our culture. Longitudinal studies can also be done to see if the gender biases
individuals have when they are young parents are the same as when their grandchildren or nieces
and nephews play sports.
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References
Adriaanse, J. A. & Crosswhite, J. J. (2008). David or Mia? The influence of gender on
adolescent girls’ choice of sport role models. Women’s Studies International Forum, 31,
383-389.
Bioche, J., Plaza, M., Chalabaev, A., Guillet-Descas, E., & Sarrazin, P. (2014). Social
Antecedents and Consequences of Gender-Sport Stereotypes During Adolescence.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(2), 259-274.
Gender Equity / Title IX Important Facts. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/inclusion/gender-equity/title-ix-important-facts
Gilenstam, K., Karp, S., & Henriksson-Larsen, K. (2007). Gender in ice hockey: women in a
male territory. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 18, 235-249.
Hardin, M. & Greer, J. D. (2009). The Influence of Gender-role Socialization, Media Use and
Sports Participation on Perceptions of Gender-Appropriate Sports. Journal of Sport
Behavior, 32(2), 207-225.
Joel, D. & Yarimi, D. (2014). Consciousness-Raising in a Gender Conflict Group. International
Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 64(1), 49-69.
Newton, E. K., Laible, D., Carlo, G., Steele, J. S., & McGinley, M. (2014). Do sensitive parents
foster kind children, or vice versa? Bidirectional influences between children’s prosocial
behavior and parental sensitivity. Developmental Psychology, 50(6), 1808-1816.
Steinfeldt, J. A., Zakrajsek, R., Carter, H., & Steinfeldt, M. C. (2011). Conformity to gender
norms among female student-athletes: Implications for body image. Psychology of Men
& Masculinity, 12(4), 401-416.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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Valentova, M. (2013). Age and sex differences in gender role attitudes in Luxembourg between
1999 and 2008. Work, Employment and Society, 27(4), 639-657.
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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Appendix A
***Your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to refuse to answer any of
the following questions***
Dear Parent,
The town is doing an analysis of the number and types of sports/extracurricular activities
offered for children (boys & girls) between the ages of 5 & 10 years old to participate in. In
order to see which ones should be added to the towns list of available sports/extracurricular
activities and which, if any, can be discontinued or crossed off the list of possibilities, we are
asking parents what they think. So parents, if the town offered a particular sport/extracurricular
activity (such as the ones listed below) and your son asked if he could play/participate in it, how
willing would you be to sign them up? Please rate your willingness to sign them up on a scale
of 1-5; 1—I would definitely not sign them up, 3—I would consider it, & 5—I would absolutely
sign them up.
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for football?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for baseball?
1
2
3
4
5
4
5
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for hockey?
1
2
3
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for wrestling?
1
2
3
4
5
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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***Your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to refuse to answer any of
the following questions***
Dear Parent,
The town is doing an analysis of the number and types of sports/extracurricular activities
offered for children (boys & girls) between the ages of 5 & 10 years old to participate in. In
order to see which ones should be added to the towns list of available sports/extracurricular
activities and which, if any, can be discontinued or crossed off the list of possibilities, we are
asking parents what they think. So parents, if the town offered a particular sport/extracurricular
activity (such as the ones listed below) and your son asked if he could play/participate in it, how
willing would you be to sign them up? Please rate your willingness to sign them up on a scale
of 1-5; 1—I would definitely not sign them up, 3—I would consider it, & 5—I would absolutely
sign them up.
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for dance?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for gymnastics?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for cheerleading?
1
2
3
4
5
4
5
How willing would you be to let your son sign up for softball?
1
2
3
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
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***Your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to refuse to answer any of
the following questions***
Dear Parent,
The town is doing an analysis of the number and types of sports/extracurricular activities
offered for children (boys & girls) between the ages of 5 & 10 years old to participate in. In
order to see which ones should be added to the towns list of available sports/extracurricular
activities and which, if any, can be discontinued or crossed off the list of possibilities, we are
asking parents what they think. So parents, if the town offered a particular sport/extracurricular
activity (such as the ones listed below) and your daughter asked if he could play/participate in it,
how willing would you be to sign them up? Please rate your willingness to sign them up on a
scale of 1-5; 1—I would definitely not sign them up, 3—I would consider it, & 5—I would
absolutely sign them up.
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for football?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for baseball?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for hockey?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for wrestling?
1
2
3
4
5
EFFECT OF CHILD’S GENDER ON PATERNAL WILLINGNESS
16
***Your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to refuse to answer any of
the following questions***
Dear Parent,
The town is doing an analysis of the number and types of sports/extracurricular activities
offered for children (boys & girls) between the ages of 5 & 10 years old to participate in. In
order to see which ones should be added to the towns list of available sports/extracurricular
activities and which, if any, can be discontinued or crossed off the list of possibilities, we are
asking parents what they think. So parents, if the town offered a particular sport/extracurricular
activity (such as the ones listed below) and your daughter asked if he could play/participate in it,
how willing would you be to sign them up? Please rate your willingness to sign them up on a
scale of 1-5; 1—I would definitely not sign them up, 3—I would consider it, & 5—I would
absolutely sign them up.
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for dance?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for gymnastics?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for cheerleading?
1
2
3
4
5
How willing would you be to let your daughter sign up for softball?
1
2
3
4
5