Gender Stereotypes and Parental Status: A Comparison of Fathers, Mothers, and the Childless-by-Choice

Only a modest amount of research has examined parental status stereotypes, and little has focused specifically on perceptions of childless-by-choice men. The present research systematically determined the content of stereotypes that are applied to men and women who are childless-by-choice and compared it with that of stereotypes associated with fathers and mothers. Participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk were instructed to ascribe traits from Prentice and Carranza (2002) to 1 of 6 targets varying in gender and parental status. Results revealed that fathers were rated lower on proscribed (negative) agentic traits and higher on prescribed (positive) communal traits than childless-by-choice men. Mothers were stereotyped as possessing higher levels of both prescribed (positive) and proscribed (negative) communal traits and lower levels of prescribed (positive) agentic traits compared with childless-by-choice women. These findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications of stereotypes associated with parental status in general and among men in particular.