Gender plays a role in how fathers treat their toddlers

Fathers treat their daughters differently than their sons, a new study finds. While girls are more likely to hear their fathers singing to them, boys will more often be involved in rough-and-tumble games with their fathers.

Fathers with toddler daughters are more attentive and responsive to their daughters’ needs than fathers with toddler sons are, new research shows as scientists looked at brain scans during daily interactions between parents and toddlers and also made sound recordings.

“If the child cries out or asks for dad, fathers of daughters responded to that more than did fathers of sons,” said lead researcher Jennifer Mascaro, PhD, of Emory University in an American Psychological Association article. “We should be aware of how unconscious notions of gender can play into the way we treat even very young children.”

Even the language used by fathers is different, depending on the gender of the toddler. Daughters are more likely to hear their fathers use analytical language, words like all, below and much, which has been linked to future academic success. When it comes to sons, fathers will use achievement oriented language, words like proud, win and top.

Also, daughters are more likely to hear their fathers sing, talk about emotions and even see them cry, and scientists believe that this is because of a preconception that girls are more accepting of feelings than boys are.

Fathers seem to prefer rough-and-tumble games when it comes to interacting with their toddler sons.

The study was published in the Journal Behavioral Science and examined whether the varying ways in which fathers treat sons or daughters may be influenced by different brain responses to male or female children. The study used data from 52 fathers of toddlers, 30 with girls, and 22 with boys, in the Atlanta area who agreed to clip a small handheld computer onto their belts and wear it for one weekday and one weekend day to record sounds.

Fathers also underwent functional MRI brain scans while viewing photos of an unknown adult, an unknown child, and their own child with happy, sad or neutral facial expressions.

Fathers of daughters had greater responses to their daughters’ happy facial expressions in areas of the brain important for visual processing, reward, emotion regulation and face processing than fathers of sons. There was no difference between how fathers of daughters and fathers of sons responded when seeing their children with sad faces.

The study couldn’t determine if those different brain responses meant fathers are somehow hard-wired through genetics or evolution to treat sons differently or if they responded to preconceptions about gender.

But scientists believe that the display of emotion, when it comes to fathers of daughters, actually helps girls develop more empathy and fathers with sons should take the same approach.