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I thought it would be important to understand how ancient Celtic women lived. This talks about the rights of female Celts. It also shows that Celtic women were revered as warriors and sometimes ruled alone as queen.

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This article talks what stereotypes are and how they affect average the average person.

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Our society has a set of ideas about how we expect men and women to dress, behave, and present themselves.

What are gender roles?

Gender roles in society means how we're expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold.

Every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, but they can be very different from group to group. They can also change in the same society over time. For example, pink used to be considered a masculine color in the U.S. while blue was considered feminine.

How do gender stereotypes affect people?

A stereotype is a widely accepted judgment or bias about a person or group - even though it's overly simplified and not always accurate. Stereotypes about gender can cause unequal and unfair treatment because of a person's gender. This is called sexism.

There are four basic kinds of gender stereotypes:

Personality traits - For example, women are often expected to be accommodating and emotional, while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive.

Domestic behaviors - For example, some people expect that women will take care of the children, cook, and clean the home, while men take care of finances, work on the car, and do the home repairs.

Occupations - Some people are quick to assume that teachers and nurses are women, and that pilots, doctors, and engineers are men.

Physical appearance - For example, women are expected to be thin and graceful, while men are expected to be tall and muscular. Men and women are also expected to dress and groom in ways that are stereotypical to their gender (men wearing pants and short hairstyles, women wearing dresses and make-up.

Hyperfemininity is the exaggeration of stereotyped behavior that's believed to be feminine. Hyperfeminine folks exaggerate the qualities they believe to be feminine. This may include being passive, naive, sexually inexperienced, soft, flirtatious, graceful, nurturing, and accepting.

Hypermasculinity is the exaggeration of stereotyped behavior that's believed to be masculine. Hypermasculine folks exaggerate the qualities they believe to be masculine. They believe they're supposed to compete with other men and dominate feminine folks by being aggressive, worldly, sexually experienced, insensitive, physically imposing, ambitious, and demanding.

These exaggerated gender stereotypes can make relationships between people difficult. Hyperfeminine folks are more likely to endure physical and emotional abuse from their partners. Hypermasculine folks are more likely to be physically and emotionally abusive to their partners.

Extreme gender stereotypes are harmful because they don't allow people to fully express themselves and their emotions. For example, it's harmful to masculine folks to feel that they're not allowed to cry or express sensitive emotions. And it's harmful to feminine folks to feel that they're not allowed to be independent, smart or assertive. Breaking down gender stereotypes allows everyone to be their best selves.

How can I fight gender stereotypes?

You probably see gender stereotypes all around you. You might also have seen or experienced sexism, or discrimination based on gender. There are ways to challenge these stereotypes to help everyone - no matter their gender or gender identity - feel equal and valued as people.

Point it out - Magazines, TV, film, and the Internet are full of negative gender stereotypes. Sometimes these stereotypes are hard for people to see unless they're pointed out. Be that person! Talk with friends and family members about the stereotypes you see and help others understand how sexism and gender stereotypes can be hurtful.

Be a living example - Be a role model for your friends and family. Respect people regardless of their gender identity. Create a safe space for people to express themselves and their true qualities regardless of what society's gender stereotypes and expectations are.

Speak up - If someone is making sexist jokes and comments, whether online or in person, challenge them.

Give it a try - If you want to do something that's not normally associated with your gender, think about whether you'll be safe doing it. If you think you will, give it a try. People will learn from your example.

If you've been struggling with gender or gender identity and expectations, you're not alone. It may help you to talk to a trusted parent, friend, family member, teacher, or counselor.

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Gender Identity & Roles | Feminine Traits & Stereotypes

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Our society has a set of ideas about how we expect men and women to dress, behave, and present themselves. Gender roles in society means how we're expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex.

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Modern Feminism and the Change in  Disney Princesses

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Modern Feminism and the Change in  Disney Princesses

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This article talks about the women of Disney and compares them to the men of Disney. It also talks about the danger of traditional gender roles. It also talks about how we can change traditional roles depicted in films.

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Because Of Modern Feminism Disney Princess Gender Roles Are Changing

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The Evolution Of Gender Roles In Disney Princess Movies

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This article talks about how almost all Disney princess movies are captive to gender stereotypes. Compares girly girls and girly guys. It also discusses princess culture.

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While women may be shedding some of their traditional gender roles, the pretty pink princess culture still abounds in the media and in merchandise aimed at young girls. Meanwhile, scientists now find that Disney princesses have evolved over time to be less stereotypically "pink," while Prince Charming has lost some of his manly muscle.

But both characters have a ways to go before they transform into healthy boys and girls unburdened of negative gender stereotypes, the researchers say.

"A lot of parents consider Disney high-quality family entertainment, and in a way it is, but when you examine some of the earlier princesses more closely, you do find some of the stereotypical gendered behaviors," said study researcher Dawn England of Arizona State University.

This is something all parents have to deal with, said Peggy Orenstein, author of "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" (Harper Publishing, 2011), an examination of the gendered messages sent to little girls through pink and princess marketing.

"When my daughter was 4 and we watched 'Mulan 2,' she asked why Mulan had to be strong and gentle but Shang only has to be strong," she said in an email to LiveScience. "I think we're still uncomfortable with a strong female character unless she exhibits some pretty traditional submissive behavior along with her strength."

These gendered messages - such as the need for girls to look pretty and focus on their appearance over their inner substance - are still predominant in Disney princess merchandise and the pink princess culture that surrounds it.

These gender roles and how they are portrayed in the media can influence girls' expectations and ideas of what is "normal" behavior for their and the other gender.

"My intention is not to say that the Disney princess movies are all bad or a negative influence on our children, but it is important to consider what messages our children are exposed to," England told LiveScience.
Girly girls
England and her team analyzed the main characters in each of the Disney princess movies for signs of traditional gender roles, such as males being physically strong, assertive and athletic, and females being prone to overt emotion, including affectionate behavior and collapsing into tears.

They separated the movies into three time periods: those made before 1960, including "Snow White," "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty"; those of the 1990s, including "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" (focusing on Belle), "Aladdin" (featuring Jasmine), "Pocahontas" and "Mulan"; and the period since, namely "The Princess and the Frog" (featuring Tiana).

These films span over 70 years of family entertainment. The lead female characters in the earlier movies showed very stereotypical feminine traits. The later female portrayals, including those of Mulan and Pocahontas, included more traditionally masculine traits.

"They tended to their physical appearance a lot, and they were referred to as 'pretty' a lot. That was an important character trait for the princesses," England said. "But little girls typically don't play Mulan or Pocahontas, not in their warrior costumes."
Girly guys
While the princesses became less feminine, the princes seemed to shed their machismo and show more of their girly side over time.

In the older movies, the princes were noticeably absent and had few characteristics that could be coded, but those that were showed were stereotypically masculine traits. The male characters in newer movies are progressively more androgynous, displaying many traditionally male and female gender roles, England said. They are much more likely to show traditionally feminine qualities such as emotion and affection, their top two character traits.

Surprisingly, the princes in two of the recent movies, "Mulan II" and "Pocahontas," are among the more masculine in the series, and these movies also have athletic and manly princesses. "Then we have movies like 'Aladdin,' where I think that prince is a much more complex character and not as traditionally masculine," England said. [ 5 Myths About the Male Body]

The character progression in the princes seems to continually straddle the line of traditional and more androgynous characteristics. In the most recent movie, "The Princess and the Frog" from 2009, the frog prince, Eadric, is portrayed as a bit incompetent, naïve and unable to support himself. Both Eadric and Aladdin show more feminine than masculine traits.
Princess culture
The princess culture is a very integral part of a young girl's life. "Most girls in the U.S. are very interested in princesses and playing princesses," said England. "The only way they are learning about this is by watching television," including the Disney movies.

Certain parts, including the romantic scenes, of the earlier (and most popular) movies, such as "Cinderella" and "Snow White," could be worrisome for parents, England said. "Often the prince selects the princess and she falls in love obligingly in a few days," England said. "It's not until the later movies where they actually spent a lot of time together before they fell in love."

Orenstein notes that the products that go along with the movies also play an important role in the gender messages girls receive. "The most popular princesses are the ones with the most bling. The products really are less about raising little princesses than raising vain, spoiled step-sisters," she told LiveScience in an email. "You never see Cinderella in her humble rags, do you?"
You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover.

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Disney Princes and Princesses Still Slaves to Some Stereotypes

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Analysis of gender roles in the Disney princess line of movies, including Cinderella, the Princess and the Frog and the Little Mermaid, shows how characters are slaves to some stereotypes like the pink princess culture. Princesses have become less girly o

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Disney Princesses Impact Girls and Not Boys

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Disney Princesses Impact Girls and Not Boys

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This article talks about an article that shows that more interaction with princesses causes more gender-normative behavior in little girls. It talks about the negative impact it has on girls body image.

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A new study suggests that Disney Princesses and the messages they promote may influence gender-stereotypical behavior for young girls.

Brigham Young University family life professor Sarah M. Coyne conducted a study with 198 preschoolers, both male and female, to rank their interaction with Disney Princess culture -- including toys and movies -- and how that affected their behavior one year later with reports from parents and teachers.

"I study the effect of media and people tend to either disbelieve or are threatened when we do research that shows that media has an effect on them or their children," Coyne told The Huffington Post. "Most people label Disney Princesses as very safe, so this is likely the first time that individuals may have even considered there is a less than 'magical' side to the franchise."

According to the study, 96 percent of girls and 87 percent of boys viewed Disney Princess media. Four percent of boys and 61 percent of girls played with Disney Princesses on a weekly basis.

For both boys and girls, greater interactions with princesses predicted more gender-normative behavior -- like wanting to play with traditional female stereotypical toys and activities (e.g., dolls, tea sets, playing house), and behaviors (e.g., avoiding getting dirty, avoiding taking risks) -- but the results were quite disparate.

For girls, it can negatively impact their body image and educational experiences, making them less likely to gravitate towards math and science. But "the boys in the study who engaged with Disney Princess media had better body esteem and were more helpful to others."

Coyne suggests a happy medium.

"I'd say, have moderation in all things," she said. "Have your kids involved in all sorts of activities, and just have princesses be one of many, many things that they like to do and engage with."

Coyne delivered a speech on body image May 31 at BYU, emphasizing the physical distortions of the media and how this "thin ideal" impacts young girls.

"I believe there is too much appearance-based talk with our young girls and not enough focusing on their true royal identity."

Disney Princesses Reimagined

See Gallery

generation now disney gender girls disney princesses

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generation now disney  gender  girls  disney princesses study gender norms

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Disney Princesses May Impact Gender Stereotypes For Girls (But Not Boys), Study Finds

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A new study suggests that Disney Princesses and the messages they promote may influence gender-stereotypical behavior for young girls. Brigham Young University family life professor Sarah M. Coyne conducted a study with 198 preschoolers, both male and female, to rank their interaction with Disney Princess culture -- including toys and movies -- and how that affected their behavior one year later with reports from parents and teachers.

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This article talks about gender role portrayal in media and popular Disney movies. It also discusses masculine and feminine characteristics. It compares the two as well.

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I thought this was important to understand the context of the Betrothal games. This article talks about the history of the games and the purpose of them.

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THEY channel a style of Scottishness expressed in tartan, bagpipes and brute strength with tens of thousands drawn to Highland Games around the world each year.

Such events are as likely to be held in Detroit and Sau Paulo as they are in Dundee and St Andrew's as people search out a little connection to heritage and home.

Highland Games have proved to be one of Scotland's biggest cultural exports with the events rooted some 1,000 years ago at the foot of a hill in Deeside.

Here we look at how they all began - and why they travelled so far.

HISTORY

It is said they were originally a form of war game in which the strongest and bravest soldiers would triumph.

Highland Games remain a potent expression of a form of Scottishness - both at home and abroad - with the celebration of pipes, drums, dancing and brute strength carried around the world in a fond tribute to the motherland.

The first historical reference to Highland Games-type events in Scotland was made during the reign of King Malcolm III (1057-1093) when he summoned men to race up Craig Choinnich near Braemar in order to find a royal messenger.

READ MORE : New charity encourages Scots pupils to pick up the bagpipes

The games are said to have become a way of choosing the most ablest men for the clan chieftain's household but it wasn't just brute strength that was determined. Musicians and dancers were also sought to add prestige to the clan.

The Ceres Games in Fife are considered the oldest, continuous Highland Games in Scotland and began in 1314.

They continue to thrive more than 700 years after the King of Scots, Robert the Bruce, granted a charter for the village to hold a market and fair to acknowledge the farmers, labourers, craftsmen and "the small folk" who fought at the Battle of Bannockburn.

The growing tradition of Highland Games was stalled following Culloden, when the 1746 Proscription Acts were passed to dismantle Highland life, culture and society.

The Braemar Gathering, arguably the most famous games in the world given their royal connections, had its roots in Kings Malcolm's race but its modern incarnation began in 1815 when a mutual assistance society of wrights - or builders - was formed in the town.

The workers were to hold a procession every year and in 1832, foot races were held for the first time - and have been run every year since. The games were attended by Queen Victoria in 1838 with royal support continuing since then.

It could be said that Queen Victoria's endorsement of the games has been the biggest single factor in the growth of such events and their export around the world.

READ MORE: Six abandoned communities around Scotland

BIGGEST EVENTS IN SCOTLAND

There are around 100 Highland Games in Scotland every year.

The Cowal Highland Gathering has long claimed to be the biggest games in the world. At its peak it drew 30,000 spectators but numbers are more likely to be in the region of 20,000 over the three-day event. The games hosts the World Highland Dancing Championships with competitors from US, Canada, Australia commonly taking part.

The Braemar Gathering attracts around 10,000 spectators a day with the Queen a loyal attendee. Similar numbers are drawn to the Lonach Highland Gathering in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, with the highlight undoubtedly the march of the Lonach Highlanders. Around 200 men of all generations, drawn from the glen and armed with Lochaber axes and pikes, join the march from Belabeg to Lonach Hall in a 175 year tradition.

Lonach grew in popularity due to the regular attendance of comedian Billy Connolly, who formerly owned nearby Candacraig House. A number of his house guests would also attend Lonach, with late comedian Robin Williams taking part in the hill race. Comedian Steve Martin and actor Sean Connery have also been spotted in the crowds.

Celebrity pulling power has also been added to the Bridge of Allan Highland Games, with Judy Murray appointed Chieftain at last year's event. Former Rangers boss Ally McCoist and actress Dianna Rigg have also taken the honour.

Hollywood actor Ewan McGregor was appointed Chieftain of the Crieff Highland Games in 2001.

HOW GAMES SPREAD AROUND THE WORLD

As Scots moved around the world, so did a version of the traditions and culture that binded them. There is barely a corner of the globe that does not have a Caledonian Society with the ties to home and heritage seemingly as important today as they were for the diaspora of old.

Caledonian Societies were rapidly formed in the 19th and early 20th Centuries to reflect emigration of Scots with Waipu, New Zealand, believed to be the first.

The Waipu Caledonian Society was formed in 1871 to help settle new Scottish arrivals, many who had left Scotland amid The Clearance and who originally settled in Nova Scotia before moving to New Zealand.

Such societies were widely formed in North America to help draw together new arrivals and act as a reunion point. The first Highland Games in the US took place in 1836 when the Highland Society of New York held its first "sportive meeting".

Three years later, the Caledonian Club of San Francisco held its first Highland Games with claims that it is now the longest running in the country.

That year, the first games were held in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, homes to thousands of Scots.

The largest event is now said to be the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in North Carolina, which has an attendance of 30,000.

Today, you can attend a Highland Games across Europe - particularly Germany and The Netherlands - Indonesia, Japan, South Africa and Brazil.

TRADITIONS

While many Highland Games have modernised their schedules with strong men contests and wellie flinging competitions, there are a few traditions that form the heart of the Highland Games.

It's impossible to imagine going to a games and not seeing the tossing the caber event and the other heavyweight contests.

The caber is just short of six metres tall, lifted, balanced and completely flipped by the competitor. The highest scores goes those who land the caber straight ahead, in the 12 o'clock position.

No one really knows how the contest began but it has been suggested that cabers - today often a reclaimed telegraph pole - were first used to help men cross fast flowing rivers.

Another standard heavy event is "throwing the weight over the bar" which is said to have started with simple stones but with agricultural weights now used, primarily a 56lb metal cube.

Highland Games are the biggest, natural platform for the bagpipes with such events soundtracked by the pummelling, proud performances of the mass pipe band - or the delicate melody of the Piobaireachd master.
Like whisky? Take part and win with The Great Scotsman Whisky Survey

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A history of the Scottish Highland Games

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THEY channel a style of Scottishness expressed in tartan, bagpipes and brute strength with tens of thousands drawn to Highland Games around the world each year. Such events are as likely to be held in Detroit and Sau Paulo as they are in Dundee and St Andrew's as people search out a little connection to heritage and home.

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I thought this was an interesting article because its seen in the film. Fergus and Elinor are much more lenient with their boys than with Merida.

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Abstract

This paper investigates the double standard in attitudes toward courtship and family formation behaviors of sons and daughters. We argue there are strong theoretical reasons to expect that the magnitude of this double standard varies across substantive domains, as well as amongst parents and non-parents. We also argue key methodological limitations of previous studies likely produce an under-estimate of the gender double standard. We provide empirical estimates of the gender double standard that overcome these limitations, including a random assignment experiment explicitly designed to control the effects of social desirability. These estimates demonstrate variability in the double standard across domains and reveal key factors contributing to the magnitude of the double standards in parenting attitudes held by individuals.

Keywords: Gender double standard, courtship/family formation attitudes, parenting attitudes

Gender differences in social behaviors are among the most highly studied topics in the social sciences. Research emphasizes changes over time, causes, and consequences related to the gender segregation in social roles. Over the last half of the 20 th century social research documented wide spread changes in attitudes about the appropriate social roles for men and women, uniformly toward more gender egalitarian attitudes ( Brewster and Padavic 2000; Brooks and Bolzendhal 2004; Bumpass 1990; Cherlin and Walters 1981; Mason and Lu 1988; Thornton 1989; Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001; Veroff, Douvan and Kulka 1981). However, recent research documents the persistence of substantial gender differences in key family formation behaviors over the same period. This includes gender differences in sexual, cohabiting, marital, and childbearing behaviors ( Barber 2001a; Laumann et al. 1994; Marini 1978; Michael and Tuma 1985; Rindfuss, Morgan and Swicegood 1988; Smock 2000; Thornton, Axinn and Xie 2007; Waite and Goldscheider 1991). In this paper we investigate a set of attitudes that may contribute to these substantial gender differences in family behaviors.

We argue that ideational factors may be an important reason for gender differences in family behaviors in spite of the well known trend toward more egalitarian gender role attitudes. Other attitudes may be at work. For example, a substantial body of research demonstrates that courtship and family formation attitudes and beliefs are strongly correlated with subsequent cohabiting, marital, and childbearing behaviors in the United States and Europe ( Axinn and Thornton 1992, 1993; Barber 2000, 2001b; Barber and Axinn 2004; Clarkberg, Stolzenberg and Waite 1995; Lesthaeghe 1983, 2002; Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 1988; Plotnick 1992). This research points toward parents' attitudes as a particularly powerful force in shaping their children's behaviors with respect to sex, cohabitation, marriage and childbearing ( Axinn and Thornton 1993; Barber 2000). Moreover, this same body of research shows that men and women respond in similar ways to their parents' attitudes, so there are not substantial gender differences in correlation between parental attitudes and children's subsequent behavior (Axinn and Thornton 2003; Barber 2000). However, we argue that there may be substantial gender based differences in the parental or prospective parental attitudes about courtship and family formation known to predict children's subsequent behavior.

Unfortunately, such gender based differences in parental or prospective attitudes towards their children's behaviors have received very little scientific attention. We investigate gender differences in parental preferences for children's courtship and family formation behaviors, or what we refer to as the gender double standard in parenting attitudes. We begin by formulating a conceptual framework for the study of this double standard that identifies the breadth of the double standard in parenting values among parents and non-parents. Next, we explain why the magnitude of this double standard is likely to vary across topics, even within the domain of courtship and family formation. Then we identify the key methodological issues limiting our ability to detect these double standards. Finally, we use measures from a unique random-assignment experiment to separate social desirability effects on responses from the true parenting gender double standard. This approach allows us to document the magnitude of both the social desirability effect and the underlying gender double standard in parenting values. These unusual measures also provide the means to examine differences in these parenting double standards across substantive domains. Together these advances create substantial new insight into the processes producing gender double standards in parenting values.

Theoretical and Methodological Background

At the foundation of our conceptual framework is a great deal of previous research on the origins of gender differences in attitudes and behavior. Gender differences in social life have been a focus of sociological and psychological theory throughout the history of these disciplines. Of key interest is whether and to what degree the social differences observed between men and women (e.g., education, occupation, marriage) are influenced by the way the sexes are differentially treated in various social environments and across the life course. For example, many scholars contend that the unequal treatment of men and women can be traced all the way back to different environments at birth, suggesting that the gender differences we observe later in life are a direct result of the distinct behavior, attitudes, and expectations we maintain toward infant boys and girls ( Grieshaber 1998; Mondschein, Adolph and Tamis-LeMonda 2000; Pomerleau et al. 1990; Seavey, Katz and Zalk 1975; Sidorowicz and Lunney 1980). Throughout childhood, others observe that historically defined masculine behaviors tend to be enforced or permitted in boys and more feminine behaviors are encouraged in girls ( Antill 1987; Crowley et al. 2001; Fagot 1974; Hoffman 1977; Martin 1998; Price-Bonham and Skeen 1982). Even when there is no evidence of gender enforced behavior or attitudes, many studies nevertheless reveal that mothers and fathers retain some distinct gender role attitudes or parenting styles that may vary in magnitude depending on the sex of the child ( Conrade and Ho 2001; Grieshaber 1998; McGovern 1990; Ricks 1985; Rossi 1984; Rothbart and Maccoby 1966) and that parents frequently differentiate between their male and female children leading to unequal treatment ( Antill 1987; Rossi 1984). Building on these studies, we construct a framework below that defines a gender double standard in parenting values, considers variations in those double standards across subjects, and addresses the fundamental methodological issues involved in studying these double standards.

Defining the Gender Double Standard

We focus on the gender double standard in attitudes toward courtship and family formation behavior. A double standard "implies that two things which are the same are measured by different standards" ( Eichler 1980:15). Thus a gender double standard suggests that we evaluate the same behavior of men and women differently; what is acceptable or appropriate for one may not be equally so for the other. However, the gender double standard, applicable towards any type of behavior, has largely been discussed in previous research within the context of the acceptability of premarital sex ( Modell 1989; Reiss 1960, 1964, 1967). The original operationalization offered by Reiss (1960, 1964, 1967) describes the double standard as the different standards of sexual permissiveness for women and men.

Since his work, the evidence regarding the existence of a gender double standard has been inconclusive. Some findings reveal that women who engage in premarital sex are more negatively evaluated than are men for the same behavior ( Crawford and Popp 2003; Galper and Luck 1980; Harrison, Bennett and Globetti 1969; Milhausen and Herold 1999; Oliver and Sedikides 1992; Reiss 1967; Sheeran et al. 1996; Sprecher and Hatfield 1996; Treboux and Busch-Rossnagel 1990). Other scholars, however, contend that there is little to no evidence for the existence of a gender double standard ( DeLameter and MacCorquodale 1979; Gentry 1998; Jacoby and Williams 1985; King, Balswick and Robinson 1977; Mark and Miller 1986; O'Sullivan 1995; Peplau, Rubin and Hill 1977; Sprecher 1989). And some have either been unable to find evidence for or against its existence ( Istvan and Griffitt 1980) or believe that the nature of this double standard has evolved so that detecting it has become much more difficult ( Sprecher, McKinney and Orbuch 1987). Interestingly, one study by Milhausen and Herold (1999) found that regardless of whether a gender double standard actually remains, the women in their study overwhelming believed that a double standard for sexual behavior (where it is more acceptable for men to have more sexual partners than it is for women) does exist in society.

We believe a number of factors contribute to these inconsistent findings regarding the gender double standard. They include differences in the subject matter of the gender double standard, generality of the gender comparison, the growing social desirability of presenting no double standard, and limitations of, or differences in the sample designs employed in previous research.

Variations in Gender Double Standards across Topics

We argue there are strong theoretical reasons to expect the gender double standard to vary across subject matter. We focus our investigation on courtship and family formation processes, but even within this domain we expect the gender double standard to vary across topic. We differentiate dating, sex, and premarital cohabitation from marital and childbearing behavior to investigate differences within the courtship and family formation domain.

Many factors point toward especially strong gender double standards in parental attitudes about their children's courtship. Historically the United States has been characterized by stronger prohibitions on women's participation in premarital sex ( Modell 1989; Tolman 1991), so we expect tolerance of early dating, early sex, and premarital cohabitation will be significantly higher for sons than for daughters ( Laumann et al. 1994; Moore and Stief 1991; Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001; Thornton et al. 2007). In part, this difference may be purely the product of gender based ideologies of protecting daughters' sexual purity ( Ferree 1990). For example, Treboux and Busch-Rossnagel (1990) find that the message sons and daughters receive from parental discussions differ such that parents appear accepting of sexuality in their sons, "The message conveyed to daughters may be 'Don't-and if you do, we don't want to know about it," ( Treboux and Busch-Rossnagel 1990:185). Research on teenage sexuality indicates parents communicate more factual information and moral discussion with their daughters about sex and dating than with sons ( Nolin and Petersen 1992; Wood et al. 2002). Some scholars even argue that teenage girls are taught to repress or silence their sexual feelings or desire, a finding that is consistent with the popular view of women not engaging in sexual behavior outside of marriage ( Tolman 1994).

Of course the difference in attitudes about sons and daughters' sexuality may also be based on parental concerns regarding the potential consequences of a daughter's pregnancy ( Schalet 2000). The evidence of long term consequences for young women of pregnancy and birth before marriage or at young ages has been a matter of substantial debate ( Geronimus and Korenman 1992; Hoffman 1998; Klepinger, Lundberg and Plotnick 1995). But for the parents of young women the short term consequences may be clearer. Young unwed mothers are highly likely to live with their parents and parents are quite likely to make financial contributions to the care of such grandchildren ( Aquilino 1996; Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan 2002). The potential burden of a daughter becoming pregnant may be more likely to fall on the parents than the burden of a son causing a pregnancy. As a result there may be cost/benefit reasons for this gender double standard in addition to potential ideological reasons.

Parental double standards regarding their children's courtship may also vary by the nature of the courtship. Although we do not explicitly evaluate the gender double standard based on the seriousness or stage of a relationship, previous research has shown that the gender double standard is stronger the more casual the relationship ( Reiss 1967; Roche 1986; Sprecher and Hatfield 1996). Therefore we expect that the double standard will be more pronounced for sex and dating than for premarital cohabitation.

The historical context of ideas about men's and women's behavior in the United States is likely to shape family formation double standards in the opposite direction. The United States is characterized by a longstanding acceptance of earlier marriage for women, so we expect Americans to hold lower ideal ages for women to marry and to place less importance on women working before marriage than men ( Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). So even though double standards in courtship are in the direction of later courtship for women, we expect the double standards in marriage to be toward early marriage for women. This contrast is consistent with both ideological differences in the concern of sexual purity of sons and daughters and potential gender based differences in the parental burden associated with a child becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy. Later courtship and early marriage mean daughters are less likely to have sex or become pregnant while unmarried.

Finally, separate from the timing of marriage, we expect little gender based double standard in respondents' ideas about their children eventually marrying and having children. In part this is because marriage and childrearing continue to be strongly endorsed among both men and women ( Moore and Stief 1991; Rossi 1984; Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Likewise, remaining childless and unmarried has been unpopular for both men and women ( Blake 1979; Polit 1978; Thornton 1989; Veroff et al. 1981). Thus we have little basis to expect to find gender differences in this domain.

Methodological Issues in Studying the Gender Double Standard

Previous research documenting the gender double standard may not reveal its full extent for three key methodological reasons. First, research in this area has often been limited to the evaluation of a general, unspecified "other" - a fictional woman or man who is occasionally defined as a college student or classmate ( Jacoby and Williams 1985; Mark and Miller 1986; O'Sullivan 1995; Reiss 1967; Sheeran et al. 1996; Sprecher 1989; Sprecher et al. 1987; Sprecher et al. 1988), and less often limited to a hypothetical friend, future date, or future spouse ( Milhausen and Herold 1999; Oliver and Sedikides 1992). We argue the double standard is most clearly revealed when asking about someone with strong social ties, even if the person is hypothetical. We believe this is especially true when those ties are one's own children, whether those children exist already or may be present sometime in the future. Although few studies indicate the magnitude of a sexual double standard among parents, it is clear from previous research on parenting that parents do indeed hold a gender double standard for their children in other domains such as gender role attitudes and the appropriateness of non-sexual behaviors ( Crowley et al. 2001; Pomerleau et al. 1990) and may even convey different messages to daughters and sons about certain behavior such as sex ( Treboux and Busch-Rossnagel 1990).

Second, many studies are based on samples with limited representation, quite often focusing on college students ( Galper and Luck 1980; Hendrick and Hendrick 1987; Hong 1983; Jacoby and Williams 1985; Kinnaird and Gerrard 1986; Maranell et al. 1970; Mark and Miller 1986; Sprecher and Hatfield 1996; Sprecher et al. 1987). College students are known to hold attitudes that differ systematically from those in the general adult population (see Sears 1986 for a discussion). Both the processes of selection into institutions of higher education and the social environments of these institutions are likely to produce smaller gender double standards ( Alwin et al. 1991). We argue that the adult population of the United States is more likely to possess a strong gender double standard than would college students.

Third, all research involving human subjects may be affected whenever the conditions or topic of the study can potentially affect the respondent to want to present him or herself more positively to the researcher. Social desirability, or "the tendency of people to deny socially undesirable traits or qualities and to admit socially desirable ones" ( Phillips and Clancy 1972: 923), is a well-known threat to the measurement of behavior and attitudes in many domains ( Belli et al. 1999; Bishop, Tuchfarber and Oldendick 1986; Crowne and Marlowe 1964; Phillips and Clancy 1972; Press and Townsley 1998; Presser 1990; Rossiter and Robertson 1975; Theriault and Holmberg 1998). This area of research reveals that social desirability tends to be a problem for accurate measurement regardless of how the information is collected, with self-reports or mail-in surveys probably yielding the lowest amount of this kind of bias ( Press and Townsley 1998) and face-to-face interviews yielding more ( Aquilino and Lo Sciuto 1990; Finkel, Guterbock and Borg 1991; Krysan et al. 1994). In addition, the level of social desirability bias present is also affected when what is being measured is of a slightly controversial or sensitive nature such as racial attitudes or premarital sexual behavior ( Aquilino and Lo Sciuto 1990; Krysan 1998; MacCorquodale and DeLamater 1979). As gender role attitudes have become more egalitarian in the United States there is growing recognition that it is socially desirable to present no gender double standard when asked about courtship and family formation choices ( Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Without explicit steps designed to address the issue of social desirability in responses, research is likely to under-estimate the magnitude of the gender double standard.

To address these three obstacles to the measurement of the gender double standard we use three specific strategies. First, we focus on gender double standards for the behavior of one's own children (both actual and hypothetical) in order to measure the double standard for a group to whom the individual has extremely close social ties. Second, we measure the double standard in an adult general population sample. Third, we use a random assignment experiment to measure the level of social desirability and to account for that social desirability in our estimates of the magnitude of the gender double standard.

Data and Methods

Data for our analysis comes from a systematic, population sample of white 31-year olds. These respondents were chosen from a randomized sample of 1961 birth records from the Detroit Metropolitan area, and interviewed in 1993 when they were all approximately 31 and a half years of age. This sample design has the advantage of eliminating variance in age, place of birth, and race to assist in focusing on variance in other key factors such as gender, parenthood, and education. Of course inference cannot be made to groups not represented in the sample, including those of other ages, other places of birth, or other races. However, compared to previous research on these topics using college student based samples or other convenience samples, this birth record based sample has the advantage that the only other selection criteria is the occurrence of the individual's birth itself.

Although the sample respondents were all born in one metropolitan area, by the time they reached adulthood most were living elsewhere, scattered throughout Michigan as well as the rest of the United States. Previous analyses concerning background characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of these young adults have yielded results very similar to those derived from national samples ( Thornton and Axinn 1996). Response rates for this group are excellent. Accounting for both initial selection in 1961 and tracking from 1962 to 1993, the response rate for this sample is approximately 83%, calculated by the number of 1993 interviews divided by the number of possible interviews in 1993 (defined as 1962 respondents minus the number who had died or were permanently ill). This yields 904 respondents.

These 904 respondents are, of course, diverse with respect to many of the key factors of interest. Approximately 51% are female, 59% have experienced parenthood, and educational attainment ranges from 8 years to 17 or more years. Of those who are parents, the maximum number of children is 6, the mean age of the oldest child is nearly 6 years old, and approximately 67 percent have at least one daughter. , which is explained in more detail below, presents descriptive statistics for all the measures included in our analyses separately for males and females and pooled together. Note that because the children of respondents who are currently parents are quite young, responses to questions about dating, sex, cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing reflect feelings about possible future behaviors of children among both parents and non-parents in this sample.

Table 2

The 1993 interview included a set of child-rearing measures specifically designed to tap into the respondent's attitudinal differences based on the gender of a child. describes the actual wording and coding schemes associated with each measure. Each respondent, regardless of parental status, was asked to indicate how much he/she would be bothered by his/her child dating or having sexual intercourse at various ages, living with an opposite sex partner outside of marriage, not ever marrying, and not ever having children. The least restrictive views about a behavior were given the highest score possible (4 or 8), while the most restrictive attitudes were given a score of 1 (the lowest score possible). Respondents were also asked the ideal age for their daughter/son to marry. The actual age supplied by the respondent was used for the response code. Additionally, respondents were asked to rate the importance of working full time before marriage. This time the answer reflecting later marriage (extremely important) was scored highest, and the answer consistent with early marriage (not at all important) was scored lowest.

Table 1

Dating Young OK a

If a daughter/son of yours starts dating at 16/12, would that bother you a great deal, some, a little, or not at all?
1=A great deal at 16, 2=Some at 16, 3=A little at 16, 4=Not at all at 16, 5=A great deal at 12, 6=some at 12, 7=A little at 12, 8=Not at all at 12

Sex Young OK b

If a daughter/son of yours has sexual intercourse at age 20/16, would that bother you a great deal, some, a little, or not at all?
1=A great deal at 20, 2=Some at 20, 3=A little at 20, 4=Not at all at 20, 5=A great deal at 16, 6=some at 16, 7=A little at 16, 8=Not at all at 16

Cohabitation OK

Suppose that after she/he has grown up she/he decides to live with a man/woman in an intimate relationship without being married to her/him? Would that bother you a great deal, some, a little, or not at all? 1=A great deal, 2=Some, 3=A little, 4=Not at all

Ideal Age (Years)

If a daughter/son of yours does get married, and if it were just up to you, what do you think would be the ideal age for her/him to get married? Code actual age

Work Before Marriage Important

What about work - how important do you think it would be for a daughter/son of yours to work full time for a year or two before she/he gets married - would you say very important, somewhat important, not very important, or not at all important? 1=Not at all important, 2=Not very important, 3=Somewhat important, 4=Very important

OK if No Marriage

Suppose that things turn out so that a daughter/son of yours does not marry, would that bother you a great deal, some, a little, or not at all? 1=A great deal, 2=Some, 3=A little, 4=Not at all

OK if No Children

Suppose that things turn out so that she/he does not have any children, would that bother you a great deal, some, a little, or not at all?
1=A great deal, 2=Some, 3=A little, 4=Not at all

Note that questions about dating actually began with a question about dating at age 14 and questions about sex began with a question about sex at age 18. Those who replied that dating at age 14 would bother them a great deal or some were asked about dating at age 16, those who replied that dating at age 14 would bother them a little or not at all were asked about dating at age 12. presents these questions and response categories as they were in the questionnaire to demonstrate how the measures are linked and then coded as a single item. Similarly, those who replied that sex at age 18 would bother them a great deal or some were asked about sex at age 20, those who replied that sex at age 18 would bother them a little or not at all were asked about sex at age 16. Thus the items for age of dating and first sex in represent the combination of respondents' initial answers about a central age and respondents' secondary answers to questions designed to create a wider distribution as shown in .

To check the sensitivity of our results, in addition to the analyses of the items presented in and discussed throughout the text, we also analyzed the responses to the initial items on central ages (age 14 for dating and age 18 for sex). The correlations between responses to these initial items and the full scales are actually quite high (Pearson's r = .81 for dating and .89 for sex), so it is no surprise analyses of these initial items yielded results substantively identical to those presented in the text. Of course these metrics for dating at 14 and sex by age 18 are different than those presented in . Responses to these initial questions are coded to range from 1-4, whereas the full range used in varies from 1-8. This greater range produces some minor differences in coefficient sizes and specific estimates. However, for all the analyses presented in - use of the initial item for central ages produces exactly the same conclusions about direction, standardized magnitude, and statistical significance as the full range measures actually presented in -.

Table 3

Table 5

These questions were administered to each respondent twice, once pertaining to male children and once about female children. The respondents were randomly assigned to two groups - one group was asked about male children first and then about female children and the second group responded to questions about female children first. This random assignment experiment was designed to reveal the extent to which respondents altered their answers in the second series of questions depending on their answers to the first series of questions. Preliminary analyses of these data indicated that the measures were affected by the order in which they appeared in the protocol, that is, respondents tended to adjust the second set of responses based upon how they had answered the first set. Hence, a dichotomous measure was created to indicate which gender was asked about first - the daughter or son. The two sets of responses were analyzed as within family daughter/son comparisons as well as in pooled record formats where each respondent contributed a maximum of two records, one per gender of children.

Previous research demonstrates other factors such as age, education, marital status, parenthood and religion have strong effects on these attitudes toward courtship and family formation ( Alwin, Cohen and Newcomb 1991; Cassidy and Warren 1996; Cunningham et al. 2005; Fan and Marini 2000; Gervai, Turner and Hinde 1995; Kiecolt and Acock 1988; Kinnaird and Gerrard 1986; Morgan and Waite 1987; Polit 1978; Roche 1986; Singh 1980; Stephan and Corder 1985; Thornton, Alwin and Camburn 1983; Trent and South 1992). With regard to sex and cohabitation, it has been well documented that women, less educated, older, and more religious persons in particular tend to have less permissive attitudes toward premarital sex and premarital cohabitation ( Hendrick and Hendrick 1987; Hong 1983; Laner and Housker 1980; Maranell, Dodder and Mitchell 1970; Oliver and Hyde 1993; Sheeran et al. 1993; Sheeran et al. 1996; Singh 1980; Sprecher et al. 1988). Therefore our multivariate models also control for other aspects of respondents' backgrounds. In the family formation domain we use dichotomous measures of the young adults' own experiences with marriage (both current and previous), cohabitation (ever), parenthood (ever) and early sexual initiation (before age 18). For those who are parents our models sometimes include measures of whether or not the respondent has a daughter (1, 0), the age of the oldest child (in years), and the total number of children. In the socioeconomic domain we use educational attainment measured in years, the percent of time spent in full-time work during the last six months, and 1993 family income expressed in its natural log. Finally, in the religious domain we measure the respondent's 1985 religious affiliation coded into a set of three dummy variables (Fundamentalist Protestant, Catholic, Jewish/Other/None), with Non-Fundamentalist Protestant serving as the reference group. We also measure the frequency of the respondent's attendance at religious services with an ordinal variable coded 1 if the respondent never attends services, 2 if he/she attends less than once a month, 3 if the respondent attends once a month, 4 if he/she attends a few times a month, 5 if attendance occurs once a week, and 6 if the respondent attends several times a week or more. The univariate statistics for all these measures are presented in .

Results

Univariate Estimates of the Gender Double Standard

Our analysis begins with a simple comparison of attitudes toward sons' and daughters' courtship and family formation behavior. In order to make this comparison we computed a mean response for answers to each of the questions in the seven different subjects we investigate. We calculated the means separately for responses regarding sons and responses regarding daughters. Finally we compute the difference between the son and daughter means and use a simple difference of means test to determine the statistical significance of the gender differences in responses for each of the seven different subjects. Our sample includes both 31-year olds who are parents and 31-year olds who have never been parents, so we perform these calculations three times - once for the total sample, once for non-parents only, and once for parents only. displays these results.

In the total sample (first column of ) we find that respondents' attitudes towards courtship behavior (dating, sex, cohabitation) and the timing of marriage (ideal age at marriage, work before marriage) differ significantly by the sex of the child. On average, respondents are more permissive toward a son dating (4.02), engaging in sex (4.24) and cohabiting (2.96) than they are toward a daughter participating in the same behaviors (3.43, 3.65, 2.71 respectively). These differences are all statistically significant at a p-value of .001. On the other hand, the average ideal age at marriage for a son (26.49) is significantly higher than the average ideal age at marriage for a daughter (25.64) and the importance of work before marriage is also significantly higher for a son (3.82) than for a daughter (3.67). So parents and potential parents tolerate their sons engaging in courtship behavior earlier than their daughters, but prefer their daughters to marry earlier than their sons. Attitudes toward a son remaining single or childless are also somewhat more permissive than for a daughter, but only the difference in attitudes toward remaining single is statistically significant. This higher tolerance of sons remaining single appears consistent with the higher tolerance of sons marrying later.

In Column 2 of we examine these same gender differences, but now only among those who have never been a parent. Surprisingly, the gender differences in attitudes about hypothetical sons and daughters among those who have never been parents are virtually the same as the gender differences in attitudes among those who are parents. These similarities are particularly strong in attitudes about courtship behaviors. Column 3 of presents the gender differences in attitudes among only those who are parents, revealing that in the courtship domain the gender differences calculated in Column 2 are almost identical to those calculated in Column 3. These gender differences are also quite similar in the domain of the timing of marriage. Non-parents have a much larger gender difference in attitudes about their sons and daughters remaining single and parents have a much larger gender difference in attitudes about their sons and daughters remaining childless. So, although we predict a stronger gender difference in attitudes about the behavior of those who are socially close - one's own children - we find within the domains of courtship and marriage timing virtually no differences between those who actually have children and those who have no children. In the domain of marriage and childbearing the contrast between parents and non-parents runs in opposite directions for specific measures. Note that among the parents their children are on average quite young, so that the courtship and family formation behaviors at the focus of these questions loom in the distant future. This may explain some of the similarities between parents and non-parents in this study.

Overall these findings are consistent with our expectations. The measures from this general population sample reveal substantial gender differences in parental attitudes toward their children's dating, premarital sex, cohabitation, and marriage. The fact that these gender differences run in opposite directions for courtship and the timing of marriage is consistent with historical gender differences in the United States. The fact that attitudes toward children never producing their own offspring do not, overall, vary by gender of the child is consistent with our expectation that the gender double standard varies greatly across subject matter. Finally, the fact that the differences we observe for courtship and marriage timing are so strong is consistent with our focus on one's own children - a group to whom the respondent has (or will have) extremely close social ties. This appears to be just as true for those answering about hypothetical future children as for those who already have children.

We also compared the size of the gender double standard across the topics represented by our measures. The metric of our measures varies greatly across topics, so we conducted this comparison by recalculating for standard deviation scores, or z-scores. This comparison reveals the double standard in attitudes toward dating to be the largest, with a gender difference of more than a third of a standard deviation (.355). The double standard in early sex is .296 standard deviations, cohabitation is .221 standard deviations, age at marriage is .297, work before marriage is .265, not marrying is .058, and no children is .019. Similar to , results of this analysis also demonstrate much larger doubles standards for marriage timing and courtship than for not marrying or not having children. To estimate the statistical significance of these differences across domains, we then conducted difference-in-difference tests for each pair of domains. The results are presented in . Virtually every pair is significantly different, with two notable exceptions - the large gender double standard between attitudes about sons' vs. daughters' sex and dating is not significantly different and the very small (statistically insignificant) double standard between attitudes about sons' and daughters' not marrying and not having children is not statistically different. That is, within the domain of sex and dating and within the domain of not marrying or having children there is no significant difference in gender double standards. All the across domain comparisons reveal statistically significant differences.

Table 4

Next we examine the effect of social desirability on responses. We accomplish this by focusing exclusively on answers about sons, but by comparing answers when respondents were asked about sons first to those when respondents were asked about sons second. The results in reveal that when respondents are asked about the courtship behavior of sons after being asked about daughters (i.e., asked about sons second), they systematically adjust their responses about sons to be less permissive, making these responses more like their answers about daughters. For example, when asked about the timing of a son's first dating, the mean among respondents who had not been asked about a daughter was 4.41 but the mean among those who had already been asked about a daughter was only 3.64 (first row of ). On average respondents gave significantly less permissive answers about a daughter's dating behavior (), and when asked about a daughter first they adjust their responses about a son to be more similar to their responses about a daughter. This difference is consistent with social desirability aimed at reflecting similar attitudes toward both sons and daughters, so that respondents give a different answer about their sons if they have already answered about a daughter than if they have not yet been asked about a daughter. The direction of this difference is the same for dating, premarital sex, and premarital cohabitation, but the differences were only statistically significant for dating and cohabitation.

Respondents who were asked about a son's timing of marriage and a son not marrying or having children after being asked about a daughter also systematically adjusted their responses to be more similar to responses about daughters. All of these differences are statistically significant at a p-value of .05 or higher. Social desirability also affects responses about a son's work before marriage, but here the effect is in the opposite direction. In this case, being asked about daughters first leads people to respond with answers about sons that are less similar to those about daughters. Although the direction of this effect was unexpected, it is consistent with concerns that social desirability may bias measures of the gender double standard. Overall these results indicate that the social desirability effect permeates a broader range of attitudes than the gender double standard estimated in .

Although one might expect symmetry in this social desirability, we actually find that respondents do not adjust their answers about their daughters to match answers about their sons in the same way that they adjusted their answers about their sons to match their answers about their daughters. Put another way, respondents' restrictive attitudes toward daughters are not subject to the same level of social desirability effects as are their permissive attitudes toward their sons. These findings come from a comparison of those who were asked about daughters first to those who were asked about daughters second that is not displayed in the Tables. We find no statistically significant difference between the mean attitudes toward the courtship behavior or childbearing decisions of daughters (data not shown in tables). Difference in means for timing of marriage (−0.58 {ideal age} and 0.08 {importance of work}) and decisions to marry (0.21) were statistically significant (p-value of .05 or higher). Thus there is some evidence for social desirability effects among responses about daughters, but they are limited to the domain of marital behavior and do not include courtship or childbearing behavior. In the courtship domain respondents are more likely to hold fixed beliefs about what is considered appropriate behavior for daughters and tend to be more flexible about their attitudes toward sons. We find a similar result for attitudes toward remaining childless. Below we examine multivariate models to adjust our estimates of the gender double standard for this social desirability effect.

Multivariate Models of Parents' Attitudes toward Their Children's Behavior

We now turn to estimates from multivariate models that control for the social desirability effect while estimating effects on parental attitudes about children's behavior, including the influence of the gender of the child. These data have been transformed so that each respondent contributes two observations to the analyses; one record speaks to attitudes about sons while the other addresses attitudes about daughters. We analyze multiple records per respondent, and records from the same respondent are likely to be similar, so we estimate these multivariate models using multilevel estimation techniques (two reports clustered within a single individual). The two-level models allow us to make appropriate adjustments for the error variance correlation between the two reports from the same respondent ( Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). As discussed above, we have good reason to expect that a number of other personal characteristics and previous experiences influence individuals' attitudes about each of these courtship and family formation behaviors. Therefore in these multivariate models we also add measures of these characteristics and experiences as controls. Our results are displayed in .

Table 6

Each column in displays the results for a model of each specific attitude toward courtship, marriage timing, and remaining unmarried and childless. Coefficients in row 1 of reflect fully controlled child gender effects on respondent attitudes toward courtship and family formation behaviors. These gender effects remain consistent and statistically significant even after the estimates control for social desirability as well as other known predictors of these attitudes. Respondents continue to be significantly more receptive to earlier ages at dating and sexual initiation for sons, and more accepting of sons' cohabitation, older ages at marriage, working before marriage, and remaining single. Differences in responses concerning the acceptability of not having children remain non-significant. All of these estimates are completely consistent with the bivariate results presented in . All in all, these findings provide strong evidence of a substantial gender double standard in parenting attitudes toward children's courtship and marriage behavior, although the extent of this double standard varies across topics.

controls reveal important insights as well. Note that this formulation of the model focuses on the distribution of parents' answers about their children, not the gender difference in those answers. As discussed in the social desirability analyses, when questions referring to daughter dating or cohabitation behaviors are administered first, responses are significantly less accepting than if the questions are asked after the respondent has answered about sons. Social desirability also has significant effects on attitudes about ideal age at marriage and working full-time before marriage. One of the most interesting aspects to note is that, in this formulation of the model, the order in which it is asked does little to influence what parents say about children's age at sexual initiation. Considering the strong positive effects of "if son record" on this attitude, the willingness to display candor provides some evidence for the argument that an open sexual double standard exists in the domain of sexual behavior. At least in this formulation of the model, which focuses on parents attitudes not the gender difference in those attitudes, parental attitudes toward sex are not affected greatly by social desirability.

Analyses displayed in verify the mostly significant effects of parental gender on endorsements of child courtship and family formation behaviors. Men report acceptance for younger ages at dating as well as younger ages at sexual initiation, and are less bothered than women if their offspring do not marry. Men also, on average, report a lower ideal age for marriage and are less likely to feel strongly about their children working full-time before marriage.

A respondent's own experiences with marriage and family formation also affect attitudes towards children's courtship and marriage behaviors. Currently married people or people who have already had children are less accepting of younger ages at dating, younger ages at initiation of sexual activity, and cohabitation without marriage. As one might expect, respondents who have cohabited without marriage are significantly more accepting of those same behaviors for their children. Anyone with current marital or parental experience endorses a younger ideal age at marriage, while those who have cohabited express an older ideal age. Currently married respondents or those who have had children have significantly less tolerance for their children not having their own offspring. Being a parent has significant negative effects on acceptance for children not marrying. People who have had cohabitation experience indicate that they are more accepting of their children choosing not to become parents. Finally, those who had sex by age 18 are significantly more accepting of their children engaging in premarital sex.

Education, work, and income play roles in shaping some of the attitudes within the courtship, marriage, and childbearing domains. Those with more years of formal education endorse younger ages at dating and are proponents of older ages at marriage. These findings are both statistically significant. Higher percentages of time spent in full-time work activities are associated with slightly accepting attitudes toward remaining single and remaining childless. Those with higher income also show somewhat more accepting attitudes toward premarital sex.

Respondents' religious affiliations also have a significant effect on their attitudes toward their children's courtship and family formation behaviors. Fundamentalist Protestants are somewhat more restrictive in their views concerning age at dating and sexual initiation than non-Fundamentalist Protestants, and significantly less accepting of cohabitation than non-Fundamentalist Protestants. Fundamentalists also prefer younger ideal ages at marriage than non-Fundamentalists. On average Catholics are significantly less accepting of early dating and place a higher importance on working before marriage than non-Fundamentalist Protestants. Those classified in the Jewish/Other/None category endorse significantly older ages at marriage than non-Fundamentalist Protestants.

Religiosity, as measured by attendance at religious services, has particularly strong effects on attitudes about children's sexual and cohabiting behavior. Respondents with a high level of religious service attendance are significantly less likely to approve of either early sexual behavior or premarital cohabitation. More religious respondents are also somewhat less likely to be tolerant of their child deciding not to marry. Religiosity did not have a significant effect on the other courtship and family formation attitudes.

We also estimated these same models among the more restricted sub-sample of only those respondents who actually had children of their own. This restriction allowed us to investigate the influence of characteristics of the children on these same parenting attitudes. The results of this investigation are presented in . Just as in the bivariate results presented in , the effects of the child's gender are virtually the same in the parent-only sub-sample () as they were in the total sample (). Important differences limit any comparison of results in and - including both the smaller sample size and added explanatory factors in the models displayed in - nonetheless, many of the other significant effects displayed in are also replicated in . The biggest differences involve the addition of measures of childbearing experiences among these parents. Parents with daughters report significantly less tolerance of early dating than parents with no daughters (row 7, column 1, ). Parents with older children reported lower ideal ages for marriage than parents with younger children (row 8 of ). All the parents in this study were age 31 at the time of the interview, so those with older children themselves began family formation at younger ages than the other parents, which may explain this result. Parents with older children also reported significantly higher importance of working before marriage than parents with younger children. Parents with many children reported lower ideal ages at marriage and less importance of work before marriage. Clearly characteristics of these 31-year old parents' actual children do shape their responses to some of these questions about parenting attitudes.

Table 7

Conclusion

The evidence we present here is consistent with the conclusion that there is a substantial gender double standard in attitudes about children's courtship and family formation in the adult population. By focusing on attitudes toward courtship and family formation behavior among those with extremely close social ties - one's own children - our measures reveal a considerable gender double standard. Our experimental design reveals important consequences of social desirability for measurement of the gender double standard, but in this substantive domain, in reference to one's own children, the double standard is strong enough to be observed even without controlling for social desirability effects. Controlling for social desirability, the gender double standard is large and robust even in multivariate models controlling for many other known determinants of these attitudes. We conclude this gender double standard in parenting values is substantial and deserves careful research attention.

Research on the gender double standard will confront important obstacles. Our investigation demonstrates that both the magnitude and the direction of these double standards vary by subject matter. Even though we focus on subjects of courtship and family formation, the direction of this double standard varies across specific domains of courtship and family formation, with people preferring later courtship but earlier marriage for their daughters. Given these differences within the courtship and family formation domain investigators will need to be vigilant for substantial variation in the magnitude and direction of the gender double standard across other domains. Likewise, social desirability also appears to affect measurement of this double standard, so that failure to mitigate the social desirability effect may produce under-estimates of the true gender double standard. As a result any research on gender double standards will need to give careful attention to the possible effects of social desirability.

These double standards in parents' values and preferences for their sons and daughters may hold one key to understanding persistent gender differences in courtship and family behavior. For example, here we document a tendency to hold significantly more permissive attitudes toward a future son's courtship experiences than a future daughter's courtship experiences. We find this substantial gender double standard in the 1990s, in spite of three previous decades of social change toward more permissive attitudes about sex and more egalitarian attitudes toward men's and women's roles ( Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001; Veroff et al. 1981). It appears that these gender double standards in parents' preferences for their children's behavior have not been eradicated by these other changes toward more permissive and egalitarian attitudes. Waite and Goldscheider (1991) argue that marriage and childbearing in the United States will either continue to decline or be fueled by a second gender role revolution - continued social change toward egalitarian gender role attitudes that include more widespread endorsement of men's involvement in family life. Persistent gender double standards about sex and courtship are not the same as double standards about men's roles in families. However, the persistence of parenting gender double standards likely contributes to the persistence of separate and distinct gender roles. As long as substantial double standards remain a part of parental socialization of children, completely egalitarian gender role attitudes seem unlikely, and the gender gaps in family behaviors are likely to remain.

Further research on gender double standards may hold one of the keys to understanding the origins of gender differences in other domains of social behavior as well. For example, here we document parents' tendencies to prefer older ages of marriage for their sons than for their daughters. These double standards parallel some of the observed behavioral differences in the general population - women enter marital relationships earlier than men ( Casper and Bianchi 2002; Thornton et al. 2007; Waite and Goldscheider 1991). Additional research will be needed to illustrate the point empirically, but it seems quite likely that these gender double standards in parenting values shape, at least in part, the important gender differences in family formation behavior. If true in this domain, then parents' gender double standards in other domains of social life may also contribute to gender differences in behavior. Given the strong double standards documented in the parenting attitudes examined here, the intergenerational origins of the gender double standard may prove particularly fruitful. This line of inquiry is a high priority to investigate the factors shaping parenting double standards that may ultimately produce substantial gender differences in social behaviors.

Footnotes

* This research was supported by grant R37 HD039425 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2003 annual meetings of the National Council on Family Relations. We thank Arland Thornton and Jennifer Barber for their helpful comments. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.

¹ Note an important feature of the experimental design is that respondents were not permitted to return to earlier questions to alter their responses.

² Our final measures of attitudes toward appropriate ages for sex and dating are based on follow up questions to respondent's initial responses, so we investigated the possibility their initial responses might have yielded different results. First, we found that the final measures are highly correlated with initial responses - Pearson's r of .89 in the case of sex and .81 in the case of dating. Second, we found that our multivariate models yielded exactly the same substantive results when using respondent's initial answers as the dependent variable.

³ Specifically, we use the SAS MIXED procedure to statistically account for the correlation between son and daughter attitudes provided by the same respondent.

⁴ Note we also conducted a variety of other tests to investigate the sensitivity of our results to alternative formulations of the model. Most important, for those responses that are ordinal with a relatively small number of response alternatives, we re-estimated the models using ordered logistic regression. To accomplish this we relax the multilevel clustering assumption, which itself yields virtually no differences in estimated results. Then we re-estimated our models of the dating, sex, cohabitation, work before marriage, no marriage, and no children outcomes using ordered logistic regression. This technique changes the metric of coefficients, but it yields the same direction of effects and the same conclusions about statistical significance as our models estimated using OLS regression.

⁵ In analyses not shown in the tables, we calculated standardized regression coefficients to compare magnitudes of effects across models with dependent variables in different metrics. Similar to our analysis of standard deviation scores discussed with , these analyses show effects of gender on attitudes about marriage and childbearing are much smaller that effects of gender on courtship and marriage timing.

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References

Cunningham Mick, Beutel Ann M, Barber Jennifer S, Thornton Arland. Reciprocal Relationships Between Gender-Role Attitudes and Life Course Experiences in Young Adulthood. Social Science Research 2005 [Google Scholar]

Rindfuss Ronald R, Philip Morgan S, Gray Swicegood C. First Births in America: Changes in the Timing of Parenthood. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1988. [[PubMed] Google Scholar]

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Gender Double Standards in Parenting Attitudes

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This paper investigates the double standard in attitudes toward courtship and family formation behaviors of sons and daughters. We argue there are strong theoretical reasons to expect that the magnitude of this double standard varies across substantive domains, as well as amongst parents and non-parents.

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I thought it was important to consider gender roles in the area and time period the movie is based on. I've come to find that women were actually taught to be warriors and they fought side by side with men. However, Brave doesn't depict this.

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As warriors, Celtic women could lead men into battle as well as fully participate in battle. Many scholars note the ability and right of Celtic women to bear arms and engage in warfare. In Women of the Celtic in Myth, Legend and Story, accounts referring to Celtic women's involvement in warfare, include, The Roman historian Diodorus Siculus who observed,

"The women of the Celts are nearly as tall as the men and they rival them also in courage" ("Celtic Women",1999).

Another account regarding Celtic/Gaul women comes from Amicus Marcellin who states,

...a whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a [single] Celt in a fight, if he called his wife to his assistance, stronger than he by far and with flashing eyes; least of all when she swells her neck and gnashes her teeth, and poising her huge white arms, begins to rain blows mingled with kick, like shots discharged by the twisted cords of a catapult. (Ellis,1998,p.87)

Celtic women's tactics in warfare employed the use of psychological tactics such as screeching, dancing wildly, pulling at their own faces and waving their own swords/weapons. Roman accounts with Celts in warfare, describe how the women accompanied their men in battle, creating a barrier behind their men with chariots and themselves (Doan, 1987). A plausible reason for women to accompany the men in battle has to do with previous encounters of invasions, looting, and rape of the women in their villages. Whether these statements were meant to smear or diminish the perception of Celtic/Gaul women; nevertheless these statements invoke images of a strong, fierce, and formidable womanhood from ancient times.

Archaeological evidences in Britain, of rich Iron Age female graves are seen in: the group of three chariot-burials from the fourth-second century B.C. (Doan, 1987). These burials consist of a central grave, the earliest and the largest containing the skeleton of a woman with a two-wheeled vehicle, with a mirror and a bronze box, edged by apparent warrior burials (Green M. , 1996).

Female chariot-burial with two-wheeled vehicle, an iron mirror, a decorated and sealed bronze box and other grave-goods; third century B.C. Wetwang Slack, Yorkshire, The comparative wealth of the tomb suggests that the deceased was probably of relatively high status.

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As warriors, Celtic women could lead men into battle as well as fully participate in battle. Many scholars note the ability and right of Celtic women to bear arms and engage in warfare.

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From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches

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From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches

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I thought this article was interesting because it discusses how women are put down today. It talks about how powerful women are shot down by being pinned as a witch.

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uring the 2016 US presidential election, American social media was flooded with images of Hillary Clinton wearing a black hat and riding a broom, or else cackling with green skin. Her opponents named her The Wicked Witch of the Left, claimed they had sources testifying that she smelled of sulphur, and took particular delight in depictions of her being melted. Given that the last witch trial in the US was more than 100 hundred years ago, what are we to make of this?

In the late 19th century, the suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage asserted something revolutionary. The persecution of witches, she said, had nothing to do with fighting evil or resisting the devil. It was simply entrenched social misogyny, the goal of which was to repress the intellect of women. A witch, she said, wasn't wicked. She didn't fly on a broomstick naked in the dark, or consort with demons. She was, instead, likely to be a woman "of superior knowledge". As a thought experiment, she suggested that for "witches" we should read instead "women". Their histories, she intimated, run hand in hand.

Obviously, she was on to something. When we say witch, we almost exclusively mean woman. Sure, men have also been accused of witchcraft, but they are by far the minority. Further, the words used to describe men with magical powers - warlock, magus, sorcerer, wizard - don't carry the same stigma.

A witch transgresses norms of female power - punishing her makes others afraid to follow in an unruly woman's footsteps

A better parallel to "witch" is the word "whore". Both are time-honoured tools for policing women, meant to shame them into socially prescribed behaviour. A whore transgresses norms of female sexuality; a witch transgresses norms of female power. Witches are often called unnatural because of their ability to threaten men. With her spells, a witch can transform you into a pig, or defeat you in battle. She can curse you, blight your crops, ignore you, refuse you, correct you. Punishing witches accomplishes two things: it ends the threat and makes others afraid to follow in the unruly woman's footsteps.

Yet, despite all the attempts to stamp out witches, they are as strongly with us as ever, from Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch in the Avengers movies, to the recent film The Love Witch, to the television series American Horror Story, to non-fiction books such as Stacy Schiff's The Witches: Salem, 1692. The stereotypical image of the witch - green skin, pointed hat, warts, black cat - has become entrenched, but beneath that surface lies a dazzling variety; a rich diversity of women who have frightened, possessed and inspired us over the centuries.

Bones of contention ... montages of Hillary Clinton as a witch have flooded social media

Let's start with the classic: the evil, aged crone. This image took firm root in the Christian era, when witches were women who consorted with the devil; but old and ugly witches predated Jesus. Roman literature portrayed witches as pathetic creatures with false teeth and grey hair, who dug in the ground by moonlight, tore animals with their teeth and used the organs of boys they starved to death for their spells. They had two main pastimes: making love potions, and casting curses. The poet Ovid blamed a disappointing sexual performance on a witch using a sort of Roman voodoo doll to take away his potency. (Sure Ovid, that was my first thought, too.)

The most famous of this type must be Shakespeare's weird sisters from . They are repulsive "midnight hags", with skinny lips, chapped fingers and beards. Their spells - eye of newt and toe of frog - are as disgusting as their appearances and curse anyone who crosses them. The classic fairytale witch, like the one in the story of Hansel and Gretel who eats children, also fits into this category, as does the Slavic Baba Yaga, and the Wicked Witch of the West from L Frank Baum's Oz series, made famous by actor Margaret Hamilton. The role was originally offered to the glamorous Gale Sondergaard, but she turned it down because she didn't want to appear ugly.

Spellbound ... Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, who was accused of witchcraft. Photograph: Allstar/20th Century Fox

And ugliness, of course, is key. The haggish outsides of these witches are meant to match their evil insides, and testify to their unnaturalness, since women are supposed to be as neat, attractive and young as possible. But the association with age also contains a kernel of truth: many of the women accused of witchcraft were so-called "wise women", older figures, often poor widows, who scratched out a living in the community with their experience as midwives, herbalists and hedge-doctors. Their solitary, vulnerable status and unusual knowledge made them perfect targets for people's rage and fear when crops failed or babies died.

Foreign women were also vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft, and the association between immigrants and sorcery goes back at least to Greek mythology. The witch Medea was the princess of Colchis, on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, which to the notoriously xenophobic ancient Greeks was alien and suspect. When Jason and his Argonauts came to claim the Golden Fleece from her father, Medea fell in love with Jason and aided him with her spells, so that he and the Argonauts were able to seize the fleece and escape. In gratitude, Jason married Medea, but back home in his kingdom she was shunned, her witchcraft and foreignness merging into a single undesirable trait. The idea seems to have been: no wonder she's a murderous sorceress, she's from the east.

This type of nativism also pops up in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Sycorax, the witch mother of Caliban, is from Algiers, and though she never appears in the play, she is a harrowing, hideous figure, a "blue-eyed hag", who is hunched over with "age and envy". She was cast out from Algiers (the implication is that she was too wicked even for them), and came to the island, where she "litter[ed]" her deformed son, practised her magic and worshipped her pagan-sounding god, Setebos. Towards the end of the 17th century, the slave Tituba, who may have been South American, was blamed for leading the innocent (white) girls of Salem into evil. Her experience as an outsider among the witch-hysterical Puritans is brilliantly imagined in Maryse Condé's novel, I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.

Fears of witchcraft grounded in racism persist even today. The Roma, longtime outcasts in Europe, have frequently been accused of evil magic. And African-influenced voodoo is routinely used by Hollywood as a horror movie plot point.

But it wasn't just vulnerable women who drew accusations of witchcraft. It was also women with serious political power. Joan of Arc led the French to victory against the English and was renowned in France for her purity, cleverness and faith in her "voices". When the English leadership couldn't beat her, they undermined her, crediting her success to demonic means, since, of course, a young woman could never perform such wonders on her own. When she was captured, they tried her for witchcraft, citing as partial proof of her unnaturalness the tremendous bravery she showed in battle, and her ability to outwit her examiners in debate.

Magic circle ... the new Wrinkle in Time film features Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit. Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima/Disney/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were likewise accused of witchcraft, with rumours that Anne even bore physical marks of her compact with the devil, such as a third nipple, moles and a sixth finger on her right hand. Such accusations were a clever and effective way for a woman's political enemies to smear her since, as countless other women accused of witchcraft learned, it is impossible to offer definitive proof that one is not a witch. Perhaps what is most shocking about this catch-22 is the way in which it continues to be played out today. Aside from Hillary Clinton, who has been called a witch since she was first lady, there was also the case of Julia Gillard, first female prime minister of Australia, who met with taunts of "ditch the witch" from protesters. Nancy Pelosi, the minority speaker of the US House of Representatives, has faced similar witch-related insults, and recently Theresa May was filmed laughing loudly, and her so-called "witch's cackle" quickly went viral. The misogyny of all this is obvious. Debating and defeating these leaders politically isn't enough - as women who show ambition, they are abominations who must be deemed evil and cast out.

From JW Waterhouse's portrait of Circe Invidiosa. Photograph: Alamy

The tradition of the sexy witch, who lures men with her beauty, is beloved by modern-day adult costume-makers, but goes all the way back to the first witch in western literature: the divine sorceress Circe. She first appears in Homer's Odyssey, after Odysseus and his crew have washed up on her island, exhausted and grieving for the loss of their comrades. They go searching for inhabitants and find a palatial house with tame lions and wolves lolling around in the garden. A shining goddess comes to the door, and invites them in. She gives them food and wine which she has drugged with spell-herbs, then lifts her wand and turns them into pigs.

Circe's story brings together many classic witchy motifs: a skill with herbs and potions, a magic wand, control over animals. But what is most notable is her moral ambiguity - though she begins the episode as a figure of menace, after she and Odysseus become lovers, she transforms his men back and offers vital resources and advice to Odysseus for his journey home. Not all seductive witches show a similar ambiguity (CS Lewis's White Witch certainly does not), but Morgan le Fay, Morticia Addams and Melisandre from Game of Thrones all fall into this category.

The image of the good witch is ascendant in popular culture at a time when women have made strides towards equality

This brings us to our last type: the good witch. Before we get to the famous examples, let's start with the unknown ones - the countless women of history who used their knowledge of herbs, healing and midwifery to serve their communities as de facto doctors and chemists. In times when reliable medical treatment was scarce and expensive, they offered the first, and often only, help a suffering person would receive. Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her treatise Woman, Church and State, hailed this local herb-woman as "the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist" of her age. Gage's name is largely unknown now, but her work lives vibrantly on: she was the mother-in-law of Baum, and directly influenced his creation of Glinda, one of the most iconic good witches in popular culture. Glinda is a sparkly, memorable presence in the 1939 movie, and plays a meaty role in the books, protecting the good people of Oz with passion and wisdom. We may likewise see Gage's spirit in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked, which reimagines the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, as a heroic, misunderstood character.

Of course no discussion of good witches can be complete without the superlative Hermione Granger. Throughout JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, Hermione's intellect, kindness, sense of justice and determination make her a role model for young girls - and boys - everywhere. And she's only one of dozens of fascinating witches Rowling created, who run the gamut from good (Minerva McGonagall) to cruelly wicked (Bellatrix Lestrange).

Rupert Grint, left, and Daniel Radcliffe with Emma Watson as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros

Which brings us back to the multiplicity and diversity of witches. The truth is that witches cannot really be contained by types; they leap over boundaries, bursting out of categories as fast we make them. They are constantly changing as we change, reflecting our ideas about women back to ourselves.

If this is so, then there is much to feel encouraged by. The image of the good witch is ascendant in popular culture (aside from Hermione, as exemplified by the Scarlet Witch, Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the new A Wrinkle in Time movie, prominently featuring Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit). Women have made powerful strides towards equality, and we are seeing an unprecedented awareness of sexual harassment, assault and the silencing of women. More of these secret abuses are coming to light every day, and more of the perpetrators are being removed from power.

Despite this progress, there is also sobering news. In the last decade, United Nations officials have reported a rise in women killed for witchcraft across the globe. In India the problem is particularly well-documented, with older women being targeted as scapegoats or as a pretext for seizing their lands and goods. In Saudi Arabia, women have been convicted of witchcraft in the courts, and in Ghana they have been exiled to so-called "witch camps", an injustice movingly addressed in the award-winning film, I Am Not a Witch. And in the United States, a Gallup poll found that 21% of people believed in witches (and not the Hermione Granger kind).

We stand therefore at a crossroads - which is fitting, since crossroads are sacred to Hecate, Greek goddess of witchcraft. Will we continue to fear and punish women with power? To call them evil? Or perhaps we can at last celebrate female strength, recognising that witches - and women - are not going away

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From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches

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uring the 2016 US presidential election, American social media was flooded with images of Hillary Clinton wearing a black hat and riding a broom, or else cackling with green skin. Her opponents named her The Wicked Witch of the Left, claimed they had sources testifying that she smelled of sulphur, and took particular delight in depictions of her being melted.

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This academic journal is by Nada Ramadan Elnahla. This journal talks about classic disney films and the antagonists all being old and female. I can use this talking about the witch in Brave and how she contrasts traditional Disney "hags."

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Aging With Disney and the Gendering of Evil

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Walt Disney animated films are considered synonymous with wholesome family entertainment despite the inherent negative messages of gender, age, and power hierarchies behind them. This paper proposes to explore the aspect of age as intersecting with

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A “Brave” Schism From Traditional Gender Portrayals 

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A “Brave” Schism From Traditional Gender Portrayals 

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A research paper that analyzes Brave and the different ways it reflects new and traditional gender roles. It compares Elinor and Merida as new and traditional princesses.

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A "Brave" Schism From Traditional Gender Portrayals: Merida and the New Princess

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A "Brave" Schism From Traditional Gender Portrayals: Merida and the New Princess

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This is a health study about modern day biases when it comes to prescriptions to men and women based on their reactions to pain. I thought this was interesting to keep in the back of my mind when thinking about today's biases.

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Background. Despite the large body of research on sex differences in pain, there is a lack of knowledge about the influence of gender in the patient-provider encounter. The purpose of this study was to review literature on gendered norms about men and women with pain and gender bias in the treatment of pain. The second aim was to analyze the results guided by the theoretical concepts of hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity. Methods. A literature search of databases was conducted. A total of 77 articles met the inclusion criteria. The included articles were analyzed qualitatively, with an integrative approach. Results. The included studies demonstrated a variety of gendered norms about men's and women's experience and expression of pain, their identity, lifestyle, and coping style. Gender bias in pain treatment was identified, as part of the patient-provider encounter and the professional's treatment decisions. It was discussed how gendered norms are consolidated by hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity. Conclusions. Awareness about gendered norms is important, both in research and clinical practice, in order to counteract gender bias in health care and to support health-care professionals in providing more equitable care that is more capable to meet the need of all patients, men and women.

1. Introduction

Even psychosocial factors have been uplifted as explanations for sex differences. Pain is, by definition, always subjective [ 11]. Pain scales, widely used to assess a person's pain in research and clinical practice [ 2, 12, 13], measure pain report, which, in turn, can be influenced by social factors, like gender. From an early age, boys and girls are socialized along gender norms for how to respond to pain. Myers et al. suggested that boys and men are taught to be tough, tolerate pain, and sustain painful experiences, while girls and women are socialized to be sensitive, careful, and to verbalize discomfort [ 14]. Sex-related expectations about pain perception influence pain responses [ 7]. In experimental settings, participants who scored high on masculinity showed higher pain tolerance. Participants who scored high on femininity showed higher pain sensitivity [ 15]. In a cold pressure task, women showed lower pain threshold and tolerance compared to men. When the condition was changed so that men and women were given the same tolerance expectations prior to the task ("the typical man/woman lasts 30 seconds"), there were no longer any differences between men and women regarding pain threshold, tolerance, and pain ratings [ 16].

Consequently, gender role expectations influence perception and report of pain. However, it has to be further examined to what degree sex and gender role expectations, respectively, and together influence pain ratings [ 17].

Neither sex nor gender alone can account for observed pain differences between men and women [ 2, 5, 6, 17]. The need to include both sex and gender in pain research, and to separate these concepts correctly, has been argued critically [ 2, 18, 19]. However, it is difficult to dissociate sex and gender-biological, psychological and social differences between men and women with respect to pain-as these differences are interrelated [ 2, 3, 10].

Chronic pain is common in all western societies [ 1, 4], challenging both health care and working life. In a large population-based European telephone survey, 19 percent of the participants reported moderate to severe pain, defined as lasting 6 months or more and experienced several times during the week prior to the interview [ 1]. The results showed that chronic pain had a pervasive impact on activities of daily life, employment status, and emotional status [ 1]. Patients with chronic pain occupy 20-40 percent of all consultations in Swedish primary health care [ 27]. Another Swedish study calculated that the mean total cost (direct and societal cost) per patient with chronic pain, per year, was 6400 EUR [ 28]. Given the amount of people suffering from pain and the dominance of women with pain diagnoses, it should be of great value to review, analyze, and compile research on gender norms and gender bias in pain treatment, as a tool to increase health-care providers' consciousness about potential gender bias and thereby improve equity in health and the treatment of all pain patients. This review will contribute with knowledge from different scientific fields, and with a theory-guided categorization and analysis of the literature reviewed.

2. Theoretical Framework

As evidence-based medicine is a cornerstone in health care, professionals need to apply research results in their daily work [ 29]; and their medical decisions should be based on current best evidence [ 29]. However, there are pitfalls, even in current research, like the inadequate generalization of results to a greater population than studied. One example is research on men as a basis for treatment of both men and women. Gender-blindness, the "nonawareness of the fact that a great deal of knowledge is based on research performed in men" [ 30], has been identified as an obstacle for gender equity in health care. As late as in 2007, the Sex, Gender and Pain Special Interest Group of the International Association for the Study of Pain stated that females are underrepresented in animal and human studies and recommended that "both constructs (sex and gender) should be examined when possible in order to understand their relative contribution to differences in pain between men and women" (p. 27) [ 3]. Without sufficient consciousness about sex and gender-biased research, it has been common to neutralize both patients and professionals [ 31]. Diagnostics and treatments evolved on men were announced as diagnostics and treatments for patients, including men and women. Despite regulations dictating the inclusion of men and women in medical research, gender-blind attitudes can still be observed. Hølge-Hazelton and Malterud suggested, "A notion of gender neutrality is still alive in the medical culture, suggesting that gender issues are not relevant within this field" (p. 139) [ 31]. Gender-blindness can lead to women's needs being overlooked, as seen in coronary heart diseases [ 23], but can also lead to that men's needs are failed to notice, as seen in under-diagnosed depression in men [ 32].

The term hegemonic masculinity describes a pattern of masculine attributes, behaviors, and practices which are constructed as the prevailing and idealized norm and against which both men and women are evaluated [ 33]. Hegemonic masculinity is practiced individually and structurally, is built on consensus within a social environment, and can change over time [ 33]. It expresses a dominance of men over women and over other men that do not live up to idealized norms like physical strength, technical competence, autonomy, and self-reliance [ 33]. Regarding pain patients, masculine attributes like strength, endurance, and stoicism are valued higher than feminine attributes like sensitivity and to express discomfort [ 6]. Even if the concept of hegemonic masculinity has been further developed and its complexity has been underlined [ 33], it is still used to explain dominant relations between men and women but also among men, in general [ 33] and in health care [ 6].

Even the concept of andronormativity has been discussed and applied to health care. Andronormativity implies that masculinity and male values are regarded as normal in medicine to such an extent that femininity and female values are invisible and need to be highlighted in order to be recognized [ 31]. Andronormativity has consequences for which conditions are prioritized or downprioritized in research and health care and may be reflected in status hierarchies of diagnoses [ 34]. Album and Westin showed that women-dominated conditions like fibromyalgia and anxiety neurosis were rated as the least prestigious among 38 diseases [ 35]. Andronormativity has also consequences for how male behavior is seen as normal in conditions that affect both men and women. Men and women with angina symptoms often express different pain locations [ 36]. Even though angina is common in both men and women, it has been shown that women's pain has been referred to as atypical, which in this context means not like men's pain, positioning men's pain as the norm [ 36].

The purpose of this study is to review literature from medical, behavioral, and social sciences on (i) gendered norms about men and women with pain, (ii) gendered norms about how men and women with pain cope with their daily life, and (iii) gender bias in the treatment of pain including both the patient-provider encounter and professional treatment decisions. However, the aim of this study is not to prove if gendered norms in health care exist-which earlier research already has shown [ 2, 3, 13]-but to collect and analyze gendered norms and gender bias as described in pain literature and deepen the knowledge about them. The second purpose is to analyze the findings in relation to concepts of hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity in the health care, as a general driving force of gender constructions in Western societies.

3. Method

In this review, sex is defined as a biological construct, in terms of differences between men and women concerning anatomy, physiology, genes, and hormones. Gender is defined as "a social construct regarding culture-bound conventions, roles, and behaviors for, as well as relations between and among, women and men and boys and girls" (p 653) [ 18]. Gender norms concern behaviors which are generally considered to be appropriate, desirable, and "normal" for men or for women [ 19]. In this review, we also use the term gendered norms. In different situations and areas in daily life, different reactions and behaviors of men and women are expected. Thus, norms about leisure activities, reactions to life events, social relations and so on are gendered and go along with different expectations on men and women, which in turn risks to consolidate the dichotomous construction of gender.

This study was designed as a theory-guided review, with the purpose to collect knowledge generated through diverse methodologies within different scientific fields. To integrate and analyze knowledge from different scientific fields, with data from empirical and theoretical literature, has been described as a way to extend existing knowledge into new insights and new holistic concepts [ 37- 39]. Knowledge about gender norms in pain treatment can be found in the medical, behavioral, and social sciences, generated by quantitative and qualitative studies, theory development, systematical reviews, and so on. This review was theory-guided with a preunderstanding that gendered norms exist and influence the patient-provider relation and treatment decisions. However, first after the categorization of the reviewed studies, hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity were found as adequate theoretical concepts for a deeper analysis of the results.

3.1. Search Methods

A literature search was conducted using the following databases: PsycINFO, CINAHL, and PubMed. These databases were chosen in order to capture a broad spectrum of research from the medical, behavioral, and social sciences. The searches were limited to studies comprising human research subjects, articles written in English and published between January 2000 and April 2015. The following search terms were used, as text terms, applied to the whole article: chronic pain and femininity, chronic pain and masculinity, chronic pain and gender bias, chronic pain and gender stereotypes, and chronic pain and gender roles. The selection of search terms was theory-guided. That means, we did not review all literature about pain to examine if gender norms exist, but searched for articles that described them. The search rendered 688 articles; 175 duplicates were removed, and the other articles' title and abstract were read. The literature search was supplemented by a manual search, where relevant articles were retrieved from back references, citations, and a directed Google Scholar search. Even though the term gender roles was used, no study concerning transgender or other gender identities came up.

It has been argued that it is common practice to use the word "gender" when "sex" is meant, in health-care research in general [ 40], as well as in pain research in particular [ 6, 41]. As a consequence, articles were removed when they clearly intended to examine sex differences despite using the word "gender." Articles were also excluded when they did not relate to health-care services. Based on the criteria outlined above, 77 articles were selected for inclusion in the review; an overview of these articles is shown in Table 1.

3.2. Data Analysis

The material was sorted into three theoretical categories corresponding to the research questions and thereby providing the study with a conceptual framework [ 42]. The theoretical categories were gendered norms about men and women with pain, gendered norms about how men and women cope with pain, and gender bias in the treatment of pain. The material in each theoretical category was further analyzed and coded into substantive categories which were more descriptive and closer to the categorized data [ 42]. With the amount of data in this review, it was particularly important to maintain a formal framework while at the same time allowing for new ideas and the identification of new relations between results. This was possible via the classification in both theoretical and substantive categories [ 42].

The theoretical and substantive categories are summarized in Table 2. The first author conceptualized the theoretical and substantial categories and discussed them with the other authors until consensus had been reached. The review only used results from the studies included in the analysis. However, there is one exception (under Inexplicable-Unfit), also marked in the text, where definitions used in different studies were analyzed. Those definitions were usually not rendered as results but used throughout the articles.

During analysis, different patterns emerged which were further analyzed through the application of two concepts: hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity. This part of the review is outlined in the discussion section.

4. Results

The selected 77 articles were published in 39 different journals, with studies published in journals specialized in pain dominating (32 articles). Different kinds of research design were represented, including quantitative and qualitative studies, reviews, and articles on theory development. However, only one of the studies with a qualitative design was published in a journal specializing in the field of pain. The distribution of the included articles over the 15 years varied between one and 12 articles/year, without any notifiable trend over time. All articles were conducted in high income countries-the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Diagnoses that were examined included back pain (14), neck pain (5), musculoskeletal pain (9), fibromyalgia syndrome (5), osteoporosis (3), rheumatoid arthritis (2), ankylosing spondylitis, and headache. An overview over the included articles is presented in Table 1.

The results were organized according to the three theoretical categories (also the research questions of this review) and their related substantive categories. An overview of all categories and corresponding articles is presented in Table 2.

4.1. Gendered Norms about Men and Women with Pain

The studies reviewed showed a variety of gendered norms on how men and women experience and express pain and about patients with medically inexplicable pain conditions, such as fibromyalgia syndrome.

4.1.1. Stoic Men

4.1.2. Sensitive Women-In Comparison

4.1.3. Hysterical Women

4.1.4. Inexplicable-Unfit

The reviewed studies showed that legitimacy is crucial for pain patients [ 6, 49, 70- 72, 74- 76, 78, 83]. Women's narratives about their experiences with clinicians showed, "(...) how hard they have had to work to be taken seriously, believed, and understood in medical encounters" (p. 1038) [ 72]. The encounter between the woman with chronic pain and her physician has been described as a struggle of both patients [ 76, 78] and clinicians [ 73, 83].

4.2. Gendered Norms about How Men and Women Cope with Pain

According to the studies reviewed, pain affects men's and women's identity and lifestyle in different ways. The role of gender and gender identity as a relevant factor for identity, lifestyle, and coping strategies in pain patients was illustrated by the reviewed studies.

4.2.1. Men's Gender Identity in Jeopardy

4.2.2. The Strong Body

4.2.3. Men's Approach-This Is Not Me

4.2.4. The Female Patchwork

4.2.5. Women's Approach-I Have to Learn

It has been suggested that women with chronic pain have to learn to prioritize their duties and set limits to their surrounding [ 43, 57, 58, 75, 76, 81, 87]. In an interview study by Werner et al., women reported that they had learned during rehabilitation to explain their reduced physical capacity to their close ones and at work and to set limits for others' expectations [ 75]. It has also been reported that women who failed to manage their pain and demands from outside blamed themselves, which influenced their self-esteem negatively [ 49, 75, 80, 87]. "Subjected to repeated experiences of not being heard, understood, or taken seriously regarding their invisible but long-lasting pain, the women could still experience doubt about themselves or feel that they were to blame" (p. 500) [ 75].

4.3. Gender Bias in the Treatment of Pain

The reviewed studies showed gender bias in the encounter, along with gender bias in prescribed medication. Differences in the treatment of men and women in these studies could not be explained by different medical needs.

4.3.1. Struggle for Legitimacy

4.3.2. How Do I Look (Appearances)?

4.3.3. Differences in Medication

5. Discussion

The purpose of this study was to review and condense literature on gendered norms about men and women with pain, gendered norms about how men and women with pain cope with their daily life, and gender bias in the treatment of pain. In the following, main findings are discussed and analyzed with theories related to the concepts andronormativity and hegemonic masculinity.

Among the main findings in this review was a distinct pattern of gendered norms described in pain literature, in line with hegemonic masculinity, that distinguished men's and women's perceptions, expressions, and coping with chronic pain. For instance, men were presented as being stoic, in control, and avoiding seeking health care [ 45, 46]. Women, on the other hand were presented as being more sensitive to pain and more willing to show and to report pain [ 62, 63], compared to men. These overall findings confirm a pattern of separation between men and women, not embedded in biological differences but gendered norms. The dichotomy between men and women has been described as a way to establish and maintain the gender order, allowing men's dominance over women [ 33]. That women were described in comparison to men can also be seen as a proof for andronormativity in health care, stressing that men, and health problems more often present in men, tend to be considered as the norm, while women (and other social groups outside the norm) are seen as irregularities. Since men are the norm and perceived as being "normal," women are compared to them. Although women have more pain than men [ 3, 7] and dominate most chronic pain diagnoses [ 3, 7], they are described in comparison to men, as being deviant from the norm, even when they are in majority.

Another main finding was the pattern of andronormativity in relation to certain pain diagnoses. There are conditions where pain is the only reported symptom. Those conditions are highly dominated by women and have been described as difficult to fit in to the traditional bioscientific medical system [ 69, 70]. They have low status in the medical hierarchy of diagnoses [ 35], and women with those diagnoses are often questioned as patients [ 69, 83]. The concept of andronormativity implies that men and masculinity dominate health care to such an extent that women and femininity become invisible. Our results showed that symptoms in women-dominated conditions that do not fit the masculine norm actually seem to be invisible. The definitions of these conditions in the reviewed studies have focused on the absence of medically provable signs, for example, "pain in the absence of diagnostic evidence" or "pain without organic pathology." Accordingly, those conditions were not defined in their own terms but in terms of what they lack-in relation to the predominant medical norm. Interestingly, even women with those "medically unexplained" conditions have been treated as if their illness does not exist. Our results showed that those women have been described as "malingerers" or as "if the pain is all in her head" [ 49, 71]. An interesting finding worthy of future elaborations is that those pain conditions, which are predominantly suffered by women, are underexplored, and portrayed as a challenge for medicine [ 47, 70]. It would also be interesting to further investigate if the key for change lies in the dichotomous construction of gender, which can lead to different diagnoses given to men and women, despite equal needs or in the masculine stamp of bioscientific health care, which can lead to different approaches to high- and low-status diagnoses.

Another major finding is that women's pain in the reviewed studies was psychologized [ 13, 72]. According to hegemonic masculinity, psychological strain is feminine coded and at the same time down-valued in comparison to somatic conditions [ 32]. Consequently, when their pain condition is psychologized by health-care providers, women can feel that their pain is down-valued or dismissed, which in turn can cause stress [ 82]. Stress cues can, in turn, lead health-care providers to take patients' pain less serious [ 82], thus leading to a vicious circle. As long as stress and psychological strain are feminine coded, and a hierarchy between somatic and psychological findings exists in health care, there is a risk that not only the dichotomy between men's and women's pain, but also between somatic and psychological conditions is further consolidated.

Even men with chronic pain have to deal with hegemonic masculinity in health care. Physical strength is idealized in hegemonic masculinity, in opposition to weakness [ 33]. Chronic pain per se is a threat to idealized masculinities as pain generally goes along with loss of muscle strength. Our results indeed showed that physical strength was central for men's gender identity, whereas weakness threatened it [ 54, 55], and that men with chronic pain risked to be perceived as more feminine than the typical man [ 50]. Imbedded in hegemonic masculinity is a competition for dominance among men, and the threat of losing masculinity is a threat of losing power [ 33]. Men in the reviewed studies showed different strategies, like denial and rejection, to deal with what could be described as a threat of losing masculinity ideals. An example is ignoring or questioning the diagnosis, or not following clinicians' advice [ 48, 54]. Another interesting finding was that men according to the reviewed studies explained their pain with factors from outside, beyond their control [ 46, 57]. This may be a way for men to express that pain is not a part of them and their identity and could be understood as the attempt to keep the position as a masculine man by separating the feminine coded pain from the masculine man.

A recurrent finding in the studies reviewed was women's struggle to try to handle pain and multiple demands from their surroundings simultaneously [ 75, 76]. Traditionally, as part of the gender order, women are responsible for their home and family and to take care of themselves. However, our results showed that an overload of responsibility for family, work, household, their pain, and their wellbeing seemed to be an obstacle for recovery for women with pain [ 49, 87]. Our results also showed that health-care providers considered it important that women learn to say "no" to demands from others [ 75]. Even if this may be thought as an attempt to lower women's overload of responsibility, it can actually increase women's responsibility [ 75]. This could be explained by hegemonic masculinity, where the subordinate part is expected to conform to the prevailing norm, making women responsible to solve their issue and also being responsible for the outcome. The consequences of hegemonic masculinity can increase the burden on women with chronic pain, as the reviewed studies showed.

In summary, our results confirmed a paradox, highlighted by Hoffmann and Tarzian [ 13]; compared to men, women have more pain, and it is more accepted for women to show pain, and more women are diagnosed with chronic pain syndromes. Yet, paradoxically, women's pain reports are taken less seriously [ 13, 71, 78], their pain is discounted as being psychic or nonexistent [ 69, 70, 72], and their medication is less adequate than treatment given to men [ 2, 96]. This has been described as a paradox [ 13] but can be explained as an expression for hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity in health care.

5.1. The Relation between Gendered Norms and Gender Bias

Several researchers [ 2, 3] have emphasized the risk of gender bias in the treatment of pain; however, studies that demonstrated objectively measurable gender bias in medical treatment were less extensive and less consistent. Subjectivity in the assessment of pain makes pain experiences and pain treatment sensitive to gender norms [ 2, 12]. In addition, it is also reasonable to conclude that the subjectivity makes it difficult to prove malpractice related to gender. Nevertheless, when we searched for gender bias in pain, we found studies that showed that women received less adequate pain medication and more antidepressants compared to men [ 86, 98]. In addition, a pattern of parallels between gendered norms and gender bias could be demonstrated in the results. For example, gendered norms were expressed through presumptions such as "women are more emotional than men" [ 49, 71]. The psychologizing of women's pain [ 13, 70] reflects this norm, and that antidepressants are more often described to women compared to men [ 22, 97] could be a consequence of it.

5.2. Consequences of Gendered Norms in Health Care

5.3. Methodological Considerations

This review was theory-guided with a preunderstanding that gendered norms exist in health care, which has influenced the selection of our search terms. Our directed literature search might be criticized as it potentially excluded studies that did not find/report gender differences. However, the aim of this study was not to prove if gendered norms in health care exist, which earlier research already has shown [ 2, 3, 13], but to collect and analyze gendered norms and gender bias as described in pain literature and deepen the knowledge about them. Our results support the idea that there is hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity in health care, and several patterns of gendered norms and consequences thereof could be explained by hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity. It might be important to underline that these theoretical concepts were not chosen in advance but found applicable after the categorization and analysis of the reviewed studies.

Another concern addresses the large number of included studies, providing a risk for fragmentation and selective interpretation of their content. This was balanced by the coding in three distinct and clearly defined theoretical categories, which provided a tight framework for the selection of relevant material [ 39, 42]. All authors discussed and agreed also on all categories. The descriptive basis of the substantive categories allowed to capture different patterns. There might be other patterns to be found in the reviewed studies. However, our findings were consistent throughout the reviewed studies and provided new insights, which should be further examined in both qualitative and quantitative studies.

A common dilemma in gender research involves how to create awareness about stereotypes without confirming or reinforcing them [ 40]. The purpose of this study was to challenge stereotypes about men and women, not to emphasize the differences. Gender norms are not the only norms that influence treatment decisions and patient-provider relations in health care. For instance, presumptions on age, race, and educational level have an impact on pain and intersect with each other and with gender [ 3, 97, 102], which is an important field for further elaboration.

6. Conclusions

Gendered norms about men and women with pain, present in research from different scientific fiends, illustrate prevailing hegemonic masculinity and andronormativity in health care. Yet, the notion of gender is a construction and can be changed. Awareness about gendered norms and that they can lead to a consolidation of the dichotomous depiction of men and women is important, both in research and clinical practice, in order to counteract gender bias in health care and to support health-care professionals in providing more equitable care.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Authors' Contributions

Anke Samulowitz carried out the literature searches and was as the main party responsible for design, analysis, and writing. Ida Gremyr, Erik Eriksson, and Gunnel Hensing contributed to design, analysis, and writing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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"Brave Men" and "Emotional Women": A Theory-Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms towards Patients with Chronic Pain

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Background . Despite the large body of research on sex differences in pain, there is a lack of knowledge about the influence of gender in the patient-provider encounter. The purpose of this study was to review literature on gendered norms about men and women with pain and gender bias in the treatment of pain.

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Brave: A Feminist Perspective on the Disney Princess Movie

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Brave: A Feminist Perspective on the Disney Princess Movie

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This is an academic journal by Danielle Morrison. This is an analysis of the movie Brave and it's affects on young women. I can use this to help spitball ideas

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"Brave" Princess breaks Disney stereotypes, or does she?

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"Brave" Princess breaks Disney stereotypes, or does she?

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This is a movie review talking about how people criticising the movie for being a princess movie and being "over worn." When in reality it subverts all traditional Disney tropes.

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I saw Disney- Pixar's " Brave" the day it debuted in theaters, and I'm glad that Merida is a different kind of princess - one who can be read as a critique of both the trope that princesses are passive and the trend to tell their stories as romances.

But I also have some mixed feelings. For example:

The film's marketing, which essentially ignores that "Brave" is a tale of a mother-daughter relationship (presumably for fear that such a story wouldn't be a box office draw), is insulting.

The storyline itself features such unappealing would-be suitors that Merida's disinterest in romance is undercut: What if the three young men who must vie for her hand were more like Prince Charmings than doofuses?
Is "Brave" an unoriginal film?
Finally, having studied girl power media for several years, it bothers me that Merida is presented as isolated, an anomalous female, without a community of female peers her own age. Can't a girl who is supposed to be strong not be a loner?

With all that in mind, since the release of "Brave," I've been reading reviews and commentaries of the film with interest. There are two strands of criticism that I would like to address: 1) that the film is unoriginal, and 2) that Merida is a brat.

When Joanna Weiss ofthe Boston Globe and I talked about "Brave," she mentioned that a lot of early reviews complained the film was unoriginal - "just another princess movie," she said. Reviewers were complaining that unlike other Pixar films, "Brave" didn't feature a fully fabricated, fantastically unexpected world; it seemed to be treading old ground.

For example, Todd McCarthy wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that "Brave" is "familiar" and treads "startlingly well-worn territory." He also complains that it is "laden with standard-issue fairy tale and familiar girl-empowerment tropes." But is it, really? It's a story about a mother-daughter relationship. How is this "familiar" and "well-worn?" He and other reviewers complain that Brave is too Disney and not enough Pixar. In reading reviews like these, I sensed the reviewers just couldn't get past the fact that "Brave" is about a princess, rather than something as unexpected as talking cars or talking toys or talking fish.

Ask any girl who's been raised on princess films, and she'll tell you that Merida is different, and very unlike her Disney Princess peers. As far as the narrative goes, what does Merida have in common with Disney Princesses, exactly? The fact that she's a princess who has utterly fantastic hair. That's about it.

The protagonist (e.g., Woody, Lightning McQueen, Marlin) makes some bad decisions, portrayed in ways that make them seem not entirely likable. (Because of his ego and jealousy, Woody is a jerk to Buzz; Lightning is self-centered, smugly superior, and judgmental of others; Marlin is a smothering, over-protective parent.)

The protagonist does something that causes harm or potential harm to someone else. (Woody pushes Buzz out a window; Lightning coerces Mack into driving overnight; Marlin embarrasses Nemo in front of peers so badly that Nemo takes a risk and is captured by a diver.)

As a result of these experiences, the protagonist changes. (Woody becomes less egotistical and ultimately makes friends with Buzz; Lightning becomes less egotistical and ultimately makes friends with the citizens of Radiator Springs; Marlin calms down and becomes a better parent.)

(Even the witch in "Brave" seems perfectly nice. Unlike Disney's approach, there's no vilification of old ladies in Pixar's film, which is refreshing.)

Other than that, while watching "Brave," I was amused to notice how closely the film follows Pixar's formula for its protagonists:

Said protagonist has unexpected experiences, a journey beyond his comfort zone. (Woody has to leave Andy's house to save Buzz, and gets to know him better; Lightning, separated from Mack, has an unexpected several-day detour through Radiator Springs, and actually gets to know its citizens; Marlin travels across the ocean to find his son, confronting his worst fears.)

Merida goes through a similar journey. She begins as a self-absorbed teenager who wants to avoid the responsibilities of being a princess. After a fight with her mother, she finds herself someplace new and strange. Merida makes a bad decision that turns her mother into a bear. While trying to save her mother from this predicament, Merida then spends an awful lot of time insisting that it's not her fault.
Is Merida a brat?
Finally, however, Merida changes, developing a better understanding of her mother and growing as a person. She realizes it is her fault, and by the movie's conclusion, she has incorporated some of her mother's statements into her own worldview, such as "Legends are lessons. They ring with truth," and "How do you know you don't like it if you won't try it?" (At this, a young child seated behind me and my son in the theater marveled, "She's acting like her mother!")

So if the film seems familiar to reviewers, I don't think it's because it's a Disney princess story. Merida is so different from the other Disney Princesses. Do Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or Ariel have journeys in which they learn something about themselves and change? No. Their problems are solved by others. What about Belle? No. She longs for "adventure in the great wide somewhere," but ultimately she is reduced to a catalyst of change for someone else - the Beast.

I really think that "Brave" feels familiar to many viewers because it's telling the same type of story Pixar has been trading in for years. And so, as I told Joanna, it seems a little sexist for reviewers to place the blame for the film's familiar feeling on the fact that Merida is a princess.

Another strand of conversation that has caught my eye is the debate over whether Merida is more bratty than brave. After all, she's sassy and outspoken and argues openly with her mother. A reviewer at SFGate.com expresses concern that "the movie may tilt the balance too far in Mom's direction, so that the film's ostensible heroine ceases to seem adorably spunky and becomes more like an awful brat."

Indeed, in some audience members' opinions, this seems to be the case. One blogger writes that the movie "seems to accept and perhaps even glorify the defiance of the diva, the 'coolness' of being a brat, and the idea that insolence is synonymous with independence. When did respect for one's parents, a gentle spirit, and a longing for a loving partnership involving mutual sacrifice become sexist and outdated?" Another argues, "I worry that our culture perpetuates a sort of entitled-brat attitude in girls these days: that our daughters deserve to get what they want, when they want it simply because they are girls. And nobody can tell girls these days what to do or what to want. They're in charge."

In all of this, I haven't seen anyone acknowledge the reality of teenagers' relationships with their parents. As the book Nurture Shock explains, studies indicate that 96 percent of teenagers lie to their parents, often about really big issues. Which teens lie the least? Those whose parents consistently enforce rules while being the most warm and having the most conversations with their children. They explain why rules exist but are supportive of their children's autonomy and freedom.

This, perhaps, can be understood as Elinor's big parenting mistake: She dictates things to Merida without really explaining them to her, and so it seems to Merida that her mother does not support her freedom.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Rebecca Hains blogs at rebeccahains.wordpress.com.
Yet ironically, Merida's protestations and efforts to change her mother's mind are not signs of a bad mother-daughter relationship. Studies also show that the teens who argue more openly with their parents are the teens who are the most honest. According to Nurture Shock, one study showed that families with less deception had "a much higher ratio of arguing/complaining. Arguing was good-arguing was honesty." However, "The parents didn't necessarily realize this. The arguing stressed them out."

Meanwhile, another study of mother-daughter arguments summarized in Nurture Shock found that while nearly half of mothers felt arguments with their daughters were bad for their relationships, less than a quarter of daughters felt the same way. For daughters, what was most important was how these arguments ended. The daughters needed to feel heard by their mothers, and over time, they needed to win some arguments and get small concessions from others. But they did not need to win every battle; they mainly needed to feel heard. (As Merida says to her mother, "Just listen to me!")

In other words, the fact that Merida makes her disagreements clear to her mother does not make her a brat. As unpleasant as this may be for parents to consider, Merida's argumentative nature may actually be a sign of respect and a mother-daughter relationship that is fundamentally sound. That's important to keep in mind. When Merida and her mother begin to really consider one another's perspectives, both parties grow as individuals, and their relationship becomes stronger. For parents worried that Merida is a "brat" who is setting a poor example for their children, these facts could provide useful talking points for the entire family.

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'Brave' princess breaks Disney stereotypes. Or does she?

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I saw Disney- Pixar's " Brave" the day it debuted in theaters, and I'm glad that Merida is a different kind of princess - one who can be read as a critique of both the trope that princesses are passive and the trend to tell their stories as romances.