What I Say Is Not What I Do: Gender Differences in the Home Mathematics Environment

Consistent evidence shows that women are underrepresented across most Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields. Research indicates that early attitudes and gendered beliefs about mathematics can predict later achievement and academic choices in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and that children's attitudes are tied to parents' beliefs and interactions with their children surrounding math. To identify potential antecedents of gender differences, we examined whether there are differences between parents of sons and parents of daughters on factors in the home mathematics environment that influence early math experiences for young children. This study used a subset of a publicly available data set, the Early Home Learning Environment, with 929 parents (68% female, 86% White) of 1- to 6-year-old children. Parents rated their beliefs about the importance of mathematics and the appropriateness of various mathematics activities for their children and reported the frequency with which they engage in mathematics activities with their children. We examined whether there were child gender differences in parents' mathematics beliefs, appropriateness ratings, and frequency of numeracy, spatial/geometry, patterning, and measurement activities through a series of between-subjects analyses of variance. Although we found no gender differences in parent ratings of appropriateness of activities or beliefs in the importance of patterning and spatial activities, we did find significant differences in what parents reported doing with boys versus girls after age 4 in the areas of numeracy and measurement. These findings indicate that parents did more numeracy and measurement activities with boys than girls, even though they reported believing that the activities were equally important.