Do the toys, bed sheets and decorations in a child's bedroom vary depending on their parents' sexual orientation or gender attitudes? The answer appears to be a qualified yes.
A team of researchers within the University Psychology Department attempted to identify the relationship between a parent's sexual orientation and the gender stereotypes evident in their child's bedroom decor.
"I was really interested in gender role and parent attitudes and their influence on children," said Erin Sutfin, a fourth-year psychology graduate student and the research team member who conceived the project as part of her master thesis.
The report found that heterosexual parents with female children tend to provide more traditionally feminine bedrooms than lesbian couples.
Sutfin said she believed "the gender role is more flexible nowadays so the liberal lesbian mothers feel they can provide more liberal environments for their girls."
But bedrooms of male children consistently were rated with similar levels of masculinity and femininity regardless of their parents' sexual orientation.
"All parents are probably more strict about their ideas of boy stereotypes than girl stereotypes," said Megan Fulcher, a fifth-year psychology graduate student and research team member.
The team studied 53 couples, both heterosexual and lesbian, and their children ages 4 to 6. All of the children were either conceived or adopted after the parent relationship was formed.
Surveyed families were drawn from Charlottesville, Richmond, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Durham, N.C.
A panel of randomly selected college students scored photographs of bedrooms in terms of relative masculinity and femininity. Photographs were computer-edited to remove personal items to reduce biases among the raters.
Parents of children whose rooms were studied completed a questionnaire evaluating such statements as, "Rough and tumble play is more acceptable to me for boys than for girls." A numerical score then gauged each parent's attitude toward the statements.
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