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Sex Roles, Vol. 50, Nos. 1/2, January 2004 ( 2004)
Mothers Reactions to Children Misbehaving in Ways That Can Lead To Injury: Implications for Gender Differences in Childrens Risk Taking and Injuries
Barbara A. Morrongiello1,2 and Kerri Hogg1
A scenario methodology in which mothers imagined themselves and their school-age children in different home situations was used to examine mothers reactions to sons and daughters when the children were misbehaving in ways that could, and sometimes did, result in injuries. Prior to injury, mothers predominantly expressed anger to sons and disappointment to daughters, focusing primarily on safety issues in response to daughters misbehavior and discipline issues in response to sons misbehavior. Once an injury resulted, mothers became concerned about their children, but the degree of concern was greater for injuries to daughters than to sons. Sons risky misbehavior was attributed predominantly to nonmodiable characteristics, whereas daughters risky misbehavior was attributed to factors that a parent could expect to inuence. Consistent with these attributions, mothers advocated active injury-prevention approaches to prevent injury recurrence to daughters, but did not believe that much else could be done to prevent injury recurrence to sons. Generally, the pattern of results support the notion that mothers expect more risky behavior of sons than of daughters, are more concerned about injuries to daughters than sons, and believe they can have greater inuence on the risk-taking behavior of daughters than sons. Implications of these results for understanding gender differences in childrens risk-taking and injuries are discussed.
KEY WORDS: risk-taking; injury; gender differences; maternal socialization.
Injuries rank as the number one cause of death during childhood, and are a leading cause of hospitalization and visits to emergency departments (Baker, ONeill, & Ginsburg, 1992; Canadian Institute of Child Health, 1994; Rodriguez, 1990). Recent estimates indicate that one of four children experience a medically attended injury each year in the United States (Scheidt et al., 1994), with direct and indirect costs due to injuries estimated to be 174 billion dollars per year (National Safety Council, 1991).
Although injuries pose a signicant health threat to children, not all children are at comparable risk
1Psychology Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
2To whom correspondence should be addressed at Psychology Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada;...