Does mother know best? Mothers and fathers interacting with preschool sons and daughters.

Studied the interactional teaching patterns of 36 fathers and mothers with their 6-yr-old sons and daughters. Parents were asked to play with their child using a jigsaw puzzle and to teach the child to remember 24 picture cards that could be divided into conceptual categories. It was found that parents' instructional behaviors did not differ as a function of their own sex but rather on the basis of their child's sex. Parents attempted to teach their sons more general problem-solving strategies and were both more directive and more approving or disapproving of their sons than of their daughters. Parents interacted with their daughters in a more cooperative, concrete, and specific fashion; and daughters were given more feedback about their performance. The teaching interaction was effective in helping the child remember more items than they recalled without training. Several explanations for these sex-of-child effects are proposed. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)