The effects of family constellation and child gender on parental use of evaluative feedback.

Mothers and fathers of 43 middle-class families were observed individually interacting during a paper-folding task with either their only or middle child in order to assess parental use of evaluation and task-facilitative behaviors with preschoolers. Middle children were from 3-child families in which the older sibling was the same sex as the target child. Sibling spacing was greater than 36 months in 12 families and less than 36 months in 11 families. With total interaction, parental income, education, and age as control variables, analyses indicated that parental approvals, disapprovals, task facilitative feedback, and helping behaviors varied with parent gender, child gender, and family constellation. Children's task performance did not differ significantly among groups. It was concluded that gender effects on parental use of evaluation feedback in parent-child teaching interactions may be different for families with different types of family structure.