CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS AND EXPRESSIONS OF SEX PREFERENCE1

Abstract

It has been frequently stated that Western culture is male-oriented, that cultural values are principally male values, that culturally assigned activities of males have greater prestige than activities of females, and that, therefore, male children are more desired and prized than female children. This complex of male valuation and female devaluation has often been used as an explanatory principle in discussions of sex-role identification, particularly in relation to apparent evidence of female role rejection. Despite the relatively widespread endorsement of these tenets, empirical inquiries into this area have been limited and almost entirely confined to adult samples. In a study of 380 undergraduate students, Dinitz and his colleagues (4), for example, found that a substantial majority of both male and female subjects preferred a male child as an only child or as their first child. Similarly, Goodenough (5), in the course of systematic interviews with parents of 40 nursery school children, also found, among both mothers