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Father absence and gendered traits in sons and daughters

Boothroyd, Lynda G.; Cross, Catharine P.

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Authors

Catharine P. Cross



Abstract

Research has previously found a number of apparently contradictory patterns in the relationship between ‘father absence’ (having a non-resident father during childhood) and the expression of gender roles, as well as other sexually dimorphic traits such as aggression. In the current study we measured a battery of sexually differentiated traits in relation to family background. 133 men and 558 women from the United States and Australia completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory, the Barrett Impulsivity Scale, the Fear Survey Schedule and the Buss & Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Principal components analysis found two main axes of variation in these traits. Firstly, a general ‘reactivity’ factor, on which aggression, impulsivity, and fear all loaded positively, was weakly associated with father absence in women. Secondly, ‘masculinity’ (consisting of high scores on masculine traits, low fear, and physical and verbal aggression) was not associated with father absence. Participants (except American males) reporting a poor childhood relationship with their parents also had high ‘reactivity’ but not higher ‘masculinity’. We found some evidence of a link between father absence and earlier age of first coitus in American females (although not in Australia), but there was no link with age of menarche in either country. Overall, the current results suggest that previous findings linking gender development with father absence in girls may have arisen from a tendency towards greater externalising and reactive behaviour rather than a change in gender development per se.

Citation

Boothroyd, L. G., & Cross, C. P. (2017). Father absence and gendered traits in sons and daughters. PLoS ONE, 12(7), Article e0179954. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179954

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 7, 2017
Online Publication Date Jul 5, 2017
Publication Date Jul 5, 2017
Deposit Date Jul 17, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Issue 7
Article Number e0179954
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179954
Related Public URLs http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179954

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2017 Boothroyd, Cross. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.





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