A new study published in Sex Roles suggests that eight-year-old children’s views about women tend to mirror their parents’ sexist attitudes, with fathers’ hostile sexism and mothers’ benevolent sexism the most consistently linked to their offspring’s beliefs. The research draws on 175 family groups in New Zealand, each consisting of a mother, a father and their child aged eight, and forms part of a longer study that began when the children were four or five.
Psychologists divide sexism into hostile and benevolent forms. Hostile sexism involves openly negative attitudes toward women who challenge male power, while benevolent sexism is more subtle, praising women who conform to traditional gender roles and suggesting they are delicate and in need of protection.
Scholars have long warned that benevolent sexism, despite its polite veneer, can sustain unequal divisions of labour at home and constrain women’s career ambitions. Earlier work linked parental gender views to their children’s beliefs, including a 2002 meta-analysis that found traditional parents tend to have traditional offspring.
Previous investigations into whether parents pass on hostile and benevolent sexism have often focused on teenagers. For instance, a 2012 study found that mothers who endorsed more benevolent sexism tended to have teenage daughters who did likewise. A 2020 study co‑authored by Hammond, introducing the stuffed-toy task used in the current study, suggested that children as young as five already hold both hostile and benevolent ideas about women.
Earlier work also highlighted how parental sexism can manifest in everyday interactions. Research covered by PsyPost in 2023, led by Overall, found that mothers and fathers higher in hostile sexism were less responsive toward their young children during family interactions.
To extend this line of inquiry, researchers Oksana S. Voznyuk, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, Nickola C. Overall, a professor at the University of Auckland, and Matt Hammond, an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington, sought to test direct intergenerational links between parents and children. They aimed to see whether mothers’ and fathers’ specific sexist attitudes predict their children’s agreement with similar statements.
“In the big picture, we wanted to investigate why gender gaps persist worldwide, even as generations of women and men have been fighting for gender equality,” Voznyuk, Overall, and Hammond told PsyPost. “We thought that an overlooked process that may contribute to this slow progress toward gender equality could be the transmission of sexist beliefs intergenerationally – from parents to their children.”
The study gathered data from 175 family groups in New Zealand, each including a mother, a father and an eight-year-old child. The children were fairly balanced by gender, with 51 percent girls. Parents completed standard questionnaires to assess levels of hostile and benevolent sexism.
To measure the children’s attitudes, researchers used a laboratory activity featuring a stuffed toy named Feppy, described as a visitor from afar. Feppy asserted a series of statements about men and women, including hostile claims such as that women get upset easily over jokes, and benevolent claims such as that men should protect women from danger. Children indicated whether Feppy was “sort of” or “really” right or wrong about each statement. On average, children judged Feppy’s hostile statements as sort of wrong and the benevolent ones as sort of right, with no clear gender difference in responses.
When the researchers analysed the data, distinct patterns emerged linking parents’ views to their children’s. Because both parents’ attitudes were considered together, each link remained after accounting for the other parent’s beliefs. Fathers’ higher levels of hostile sexism were associated with children who more strongly endorsed hostile gender attitudes, regardless of whether the child was a boy or a girl.
By contrast, benevolent sexism showed a different pattern. Mothers who endorsed benevolent sexist beliefs were more likely to have children who agreed with benevolent gender attitudes, and this link applied to both sons and daughters. Fathers’ benevolent sexism, however, did not predict their children’s benevolent attitudes.
The researchers also found that a mother’s hostile sexism related to her child’s views, but only for sons. The authors say the reason remains unclear, though one possibility is that mothers higher in hostile sexism may be more controlling with sons.
“The big takeaway from our findings is that children learn from the attitudes, behaviours, and everyday conversations they see at home, and the messages we send about expectations for women and men, or girls and boys, likely have a lasting impact,” the researchers noted. “This matters because those beliefs can shape everything from career opportunities to romantic relationships later in life.”
They added: “One surprising outcome was that mothers and fathers may play unique roles in passing along sexist beliefs. These differences may be about the roles that fathers and mothers play. Fathers who agree with hostile sexism believe that they should be the authority in the family, and they may use more controlling parenting behavior and express hostile sexism by behaving aggressively toward mothers. These behaviours can show children that men should have power and authority and therefore socialize children’s hostile gender beliefs.”
The authors suggest that mothers who endorse benevolent sexism might actively teach these values, as they often appear socially acceptable or positive on the surface. “Mothers who agree with benevolent sexism may be more likely to hold traditional homemaker and caregiver roles,” the team added. “This may give them more opportunity to model and teach children ideas about protecting and valuing women who fit traditional expectations of what good girls and good women should be like.”
To ensure the links were not driven by other factors, the researchers adjusted their statistical models for parental education, employment status, perceived socioeconomic status and whether the mother or father was the primary caregiver. They also controlled for the children’s age and their “theory of mind.” Even with these adjustments, the connections persisted, and incidentally, a mother’s hostile sexism was linked to lower theory-of-mind scores in children.
“The most important note is that this research is not about blaming parents, but about recognizing that we all play a role in transmitting and reinforcing gender beliefs,” the researchers emphasised. “Small changes may make an important difference. Many of us have internalised sexist attitudes to some extent, and often we don’t even know what they are, their impact, or how we display them. This research is a good reminder that the little things we say and do can shape how children think about women and men.”
As with all research, there are caveats. The links observed were modest: the correlation between fathers’ and children’s hostile attitudes was about 0.29. The researchers acknowledge that, as with most work on beliefs and attitudes, the effect size is relatively small, and children are exposed to many experiences beyond the home. The study’s design is observational and cannot establish causation, and the stuffed-toy task was developed with U.S. children, with one hostile item dropped to fit the New Zealand sample. All families studied were mother–father pairs in New Zealand, so patterns may differ in other family types and cultures.
Future research will need to explore dynamics in single-parent households, families with LGBTQ+ parents, and across different cultural contexts. The researchers outlined two main directions: first, whether children’s gender attitudes relate to negative outcomes for wellbeing and social, emotional and educational development; second, how parents transmit their beliefs—whether by modelling traditional gender roles at home, treating sons and daughters differently, or shaping how children dress and behave to communicate these beliefs. They noted that because children’s early beliefs about gender may shape later interests, schooling, and relationships, efforts to reduce gender stereotypes in childhood will likely require engaging both parents and children.
The study, titled Intergenerational Links Between Parents’ and Children’s Hostile and Benevolent Sexism, was authored by Oksana S. Voznyuk, Nickola C. Overall, Matthew D. Hammond, Rachel S. T. Low, Annette M. E. Henderson, Valerie T. Chang, and Myfanwy Christensen.
