“Kids and Girls”: Parents convey a male default in child-directed speech

Adults tend to view men (more so than women) as default <i>people</i>, with numerous real-world consequences for gender equity. In the United States, the tendency to center men in concepts of <i>people</i> develops across middle childhood, yet the specific mechanisms that contribute to it remain unknown. Here, we investigate one subtle but potentially powerful social mechanism: the category labels that parents use to describe boys/men and girls/women in conversations with their children. Across two studies (<i>N</i> = 822 parent-child dyads, predominantly from the United States), parents used gender-neutral labels like "kid" or "person" more often to describe boys/men than girls/women and, conversely, used gender-specific labels (e.g., "girl") more often to describe girls/women than boys/men. These patterns emerged when parents were shown gender-stereotypical girls/women and boys/men (e.g., a girl painting her nails, a boy digging for worms); when parents viewed counterstereotypical stimuli (e.g., a boy painting his nails, a girl digging for worms), the patterns reversed. Our findings illuminate parents' category label usage as a critical social mechanism that may undergird the development of a male default in a US cultural context, informing efforts to intervene on this process.