Gender effects on Mexican-descent parents' questions and scaffolding during toy play: a sequential analysis

Parental responses following children's answers to parental questions (Parent Question → Child Answer → Parent Response) were examined during play between Mexican-descent children and their parents. Nineteen boys and 18 girls were videotaped playing separately with each of their parents with a toy zoo set. Patterns of parental responses following children's answers to parental questions indicated that mothers provided more scaffolding responses than did fathers. Furthermore, mothers were more scaffolding in their responses even when sequences were analysed separately for child gender. The results support past research with European-American families which has found that mothers may be more aware of children's cognitive capabilities than are fathers. Suggestions for future research that investigate scaffolding versus cognitive demand strategies are included.

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