Parental Influences on Toddlers' Injury-Risk Behaviors: Are Sons and Daughters Socialized Differently?

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of childhood mortality beyond 1 year of age. Although boys engage in more risk taking and experience more injuries than girls, there is relatively little known about whether parents socialize boys and girls differently with respect to risk taking. The aim in the present study was to examine mothers' and fathers' communications to sons and daughters during both a free-play episode and their teaching the child a playground behavior (going down a firehouse-type pole) that posed some threat to safety because of the child's developmental status. The results revealed that mothers and fathers responded similarly to each other, but differently to sons and daughters. Coding of verbalizations revealed that sons received more directives, fewer explanations, and more questions communicating information about how to perform the pole task than daughters. Coding of physical contact revealed that parents applied more pressure to sons than daughters to attempt the pole task without physical assistance and provided more spontaneous physical assistance to daughters than sons, although there were no sex differences in children's playground skills or their abilities to complete the task independently. Coding of the free-play episode yielded results consistent with those from the teaching session. The results suggest that in the course of routine parent–child interactions, parents communicate to young children in ways that may promote greater risk taking by boys than girls and greater perceived injury vulnerability among girls than boys.