The Role of Parents in Gender Socialization

When asked to describe girls the types of words that they spontaneously use are related to appearance. Conversely when boys and girls are asked to describe males they tend to focus on activity and behavior related terms so this includes descriptions relating to heating and wrestling, rough play, action, fantasy that sort of thing. And this is also consistent with the way that parents talk to children in particular there's good evidence that fathers tend to talk more about physical activities with their sons and talk about appearance and other things like that with their daughters.