Gender differentiation in the family drawings of Israeli,Jewish-orthodox preschoolers

Abstract

Preschool children from Israeli, Jewish-Orthodox families with an average of four children per family drew their families. Three aspects of gender differentiation in children’s drawings were assessed in relation to children’s gender and number of siblings: size of figures, colour use, and inclusion of gender-associated characteristics. Size of drawings reflected gender differentiation, with fathers being drawn larger than mothers. Boys, and children with more siblings, drew both their mothers and their fathers larger. Colour use did not differ by children’s gender or number of siblings. Girls evidenced greater gender differentiation in their drawings, including more gender-associated characteristics than boys, both in their drawings of children, and in their drawings of adults. Finally, children who showed no differentiation between parents in terms of gender-associated characteristics drew both mothers and fathers smaller than children who showed such gender differentiation, and boys who did not use a variety of colours in their drawings drew their fathers larger than their mothers, whereas those who used a variety of colours, drew their parents the same size, indicating that the measures of gender differentiation are related. The results were discussed in terms of children’s emerging gender differentiation of self and others in large families.

Keywords

family drawings family size gender preschool children siblings

Children’s drawings have long been considered a lens for capturing their representational world. Although there is disagreement as to the reliability and validity of the interpretation of children’s drawings (e.g. Hammer, 1997; Harrison, 2015), such drawings are often used for assessing aspects of children’s cognitive development, personality and clinical status (Cox, 1993; Einarsdottir et al., 2009; Hamama and Ronen, 2009; Knoff and Prout, 1985; Naglieri, 1988, 1993; Scott 1981), based on the assumption that drawings are symbolic representations of some concrete aspects of children’s world. As DeLoache (1987) has argued, to use a symbol, a child must relate the object and its referent in some way, to mentally represent the correspondence between the referent’s concrete characteristics and the abstract representation of those characteristics (DeLoache et al., 1996). Although children’s drawings clearly reflect both their developing fine motor skills and their eye–hand coordination, drawings of the human figure in particular are often used as indices of their cognitive development (e.g. Golomb, 2004). In drawing human figures, children typically start with scribbles, move on to representational shapes and forms, and later in development, they start to draw more complex representations of the human figure (Golomb, 2004; Harris, 1963). The important aspect of children’s drawings of the human figure, though, is that such drawings may capture those characteristics children deem important in the real-life counterparts of the figures being drawn, and this is especially the case when they draw their families (e.g. ‘Draw a picture of everyone in your family’, for example, Handler, 2014).

The question addressed in the current research is whether children’s family drawings reflect children’s differentiation between their parents in gender. There are at least three ways in which family drawings can index gender differentiation. First, children can vary the size of the figures, both absolutely and relative to each other. In fact, O’Brien and Patton (1974) found that children generally draw the father figure larger than the mother figure, but this type of gender differentiation appears to differ as a function of culture and context. Thus, Nso Cameroonian children (Gernhardt et al., 2013), Bedouin children in polygamous families when drawing their biological mother (Lev-Wiesel and Al-Krenawi, 2000), and children of divorced parents living under mother custody (Isaacs and Levin, 1984), all draw their mothers larger than their fathers. In addition, there appears to be a difference between girls and boys in this regard. In a study in which 5- to 13-year-old children drew their families, girls drew the female figures in their family larger than boys (Cherney et al., 2006).

Second, children can differentiate gender by using colours to indicate such differentiation. Although children’s gender-related use of colour has been examined in several contexts (e.g. Burkitt et al., 2004; Karniol, 2011), its use to differentiate their drawings by the gender of the person being drawn has not been examined. What is known is that boys generally use fewer colours than girls, and boys often opt to draw in black and white, whereas girls use a greater variety of colours (e.g. Boyatzis and Albertini, 2000; Iijma et al., 2001; Tuman, 1999). Children also use more warm colours to draw their families when harmonious rather than conflictual (Biasi et al., 2015), although differences between boys and girls have not been examined in this context.

Third, and apparently later to develop (e.g. Sitton and Light, 1992) is the differentiation of gender through the addition of gender-associated characteristics (e.g. hair, clothing and accessories), with girls drawing more body parts and clothing in their figures than boys (Cherney et al., 2006; Koppitz, 1968). Again, though, there appear to be cultural differences in the inclusion of gender-associated features to index gender differentiation, with more such features evident in more traditional cultural groups (e.g. Gernhardt et al., 2014).

The more specific question addressed in this study is whether gender differentiation of parents in children’s family drawings varies by children’s gender and the number of siblings in their family. Intuitively, gender differentiation would seem to be acquired within the context of the family, with children learning that although female babies, little girls and mothers differ in many ways, they are similar in an essential way that makes them different from male babies, little boys and fathers. That is, within the family, children can learn that appearance may be contrary to biological sex, that sex is continuous from the point of one’s birth and that it is immutable over one’s lifetime (c.f. Hirschfeld, 1995). Unsurprisingly, studies have found that families play an important role in determining children’s gender attitudes, gender stereotypes and gender schemas (e.g. Fagot and Leinbach, 1987; Lytton and Romney, 1991; Tenenbaum and Leaper, 2002).

Despite the central role accorded to families in the development of children’s gender identity, researchers have all but ignored the fact the children’s gender differentiation emerges in households where other children – siblings – are often present. The presence of siblings in the home is acknowledged as an important influence on the emergence of many cognitive and social skills (e.g. Dunn, 1992; Dunn and Kendrick, 1982; Perlman and Ross, 1997; Ram and Ross, 2001), but their possible influence on the development of gender differentiation has seldom been addressed (c.f. Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Miller et al., 2005) and is often discussed as being under-rated in its importance (e.g. Cicirelli, 1994; McHale et al., 2003). Interestingly in this context, for Freud (1933), it is the shocking birth of a younger sibling that provides a major impetus for children’s emergent differentiation of gender. Presumably, when younger children are born, children are sensitized to their being of the same gender or of a different gender than the child. Older siblings were not accorded any role in Freud’s view of children’s learning of gender differentiation. In line with this, Dunn and Kendrick (1982) noted that after the birth of a sibling, children make explicit comparisons of their own attributes with those of their siblings, including genital differences, for example, ‘Hasn’t got a widdly’ (p. 65). As a British mother explained about her 4-year-old ‘he’s always asking me about it . . . who has a tail and who has not . . . he noticed she was different as soon as she was born’ (Newson & Newson, 1968: 379). Hence, children with younger siblings may be expected to evidence greater gender differentiation than those with older siblings, as has been found (Karniol, 2009). Yet, there is no certainty that the impact of siblings would also be evident in children’s gender-differentiated drawings of their family.

Given that both the size of drawings of mothers and fathers and the gender differentiation of drawings in terms of the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics appear to vary depending on culture, the culture focused on in this study – Israeli, Jewish-Orthodox culture – may be particularly relevant for several reasons. First, as in many other cultures, in Jewish-Orthodox culture, women are generally the ‘soul’ and guardians of the Jewish home (Meiselman, 1978), being largely responsible for raising and nurturing children. But in contrast with other cultures, men in Jewish-Orthodox homes ‘are assigned the responsibility for the cognitive education of the child’ (Davidman, 1990: 43). That is, fathers are held responsible for educating their children in the ways of the Torah, teaching them to read the Bible, to follow the commandments and to pray. Given the clear-cut divergence between mothers’ and fathers’ roles and the fact that mothers are the primary caretakers of preschoolers, size inversions (e.g. Montepare, 1995) in which mothers are drawn larger than fathers, may be evident in the drawings of preschoolers from Jewish-Orthodox families, and especially those of girls, who at all ages, are generally more involved in the household than are boys (Bruckauf and Rees, 2017).

Second, the rate of fertility in Jewish-Orthodox families is very high, with an average of over four children (Okun, 2013). This fertility rate reflects both adoption of the Biblical commandment to ‘go forth and multiply’ and the concomitant restriction on the use of birth control. Because women in this culture are often pregnant, discussions of soon-to-be-born babies and exposure to the ongoing care of babies – which is uniquely associated with women in this culture – may promote greater understanding of gender differentiation in children with more siblings. Such understanding of gender differentiation may translate into greater inclusion of gender-associated characteristics in the drawings of children with more siblings.

Finally, Jewish-Orthodox families follow strict rules of modesty – pants are not allowed for women, women generally wear long skirts that skim their ankles, and they either wear wigs or cover their hair with hats or kerchiefs. Men generally have beards and may or may not have sidelocks, long curly locks of hair that frame the face on both sides. Hence, children in such families may be more highly sensitized to gender-associated characteristics in their drawings of mothers and fathers than in their drawings of children.

In this light, the hypotheses were that (1) children with more siblings will evidence greater gender differentiation across all three measures of gender differentiation, (2) children, and especially girls, would draw their mothers larger than their fathers and (3) gender-associated characteristics will be more prevalent in drawings of mothers and fathers than in the drawings of children, and especially in the drawings of children with more siblings. No hypotheses were generated as to how colour would be used to index gender differentiation. In addition, no directional hypotheses were generated as to possible relations between the three measures of gender differentiation as such relations have not been examined in prior research.

Participants

Participants were 102 preschool children, 52 boys and 50 girls, aged 4–5.5, living in traditional, two-parent, Jewish-Orthodox families in small settlements in the vicinity of the city of Jerusalem. The preschools were run by a Jewish-Orthodox organization whose stated mission is to inculcate Jewish-Orthodox values, Biblical teachings, and the importance of religious ceremonies and symbols. The number of siblings drawn by children ranged from 0–7, with a mean of 3.88. Forty-five children were classified as having few (⩽ 3) siblings and 47 children were classified as having many (> 3) siblings.

Procedure

Children were given a blank page while seated at their tables and were asked by their preschool teacher to draw their family. No further instructions were given and each child could take whatever pencils, coloured pencils, or markers were available at their table. After their drawings were completed, children were asked individually to indicate the figures that represent their mother, their father, and themselves. Due to experimenter error, several children did not indicate which of the figures represented themselves.

Results

Six girls and four boys only drew one of their parents and their drawings were not examined any further. The remaining 92 children’s drawings were examined to derive several measures: size of self, size of self relative to the largest sibling, size of mother, size of father, number of siblings drawn, number of colours used and the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics in drawings of adults and in drawings of children.

The size of the figures was measured in centimetres and rounded off to the half centimetre. As in Gernhardt et al. (2013), the drawings of self, mother, father and largest sibling were measured along an imaginary vertical axis from the lowest point of the figure to the top of the head or hair. In addition to absolute size, a child-to-sibling size ratio was calculated by measuring the relative size of the drawing of self as compared to that of largest sibling.

The number of colours used in the drawings was counted by two independent raters. Agreement on this measure was 95 per cent and disagreements were settled after re-examining the colours used in each of the drawings.

The gender differentiation of the drawings of adults and the gender differentiation of the drawings of children in terms of gender-associated characteristics was assessed by two independent raters who were blind to child gender and made a dichotomous decision as to whether or not one could differentiate male from female figures in the figures designated as parents, and in the figures of the children. Instructions were to judge whether the drawings of mothers and fathers, child and siblings, allowed one to differentiate mothers from fathers, and child from siblings in terms of gender. Inter-rater agreement on coding of gender differentiation of the adult figures was 92 per cent, and 90 per cent on the figures of children. Disagreements were settled after discussion. The drawings of 16 children were not used for several of the above measures because children either did not include themselves in the drawing (c.f. Payne, 1996), or because the raters could not identify which figure represented the drawing child.

Size of drawings as an index of gender differentiation

The first analysis was conducted on the size of children’s drawings of themselves, which ranged in size from 1.5–18.00 cm, with a mean of 8.53 cm. An analysis of variance with child gender and number of siblings (few/many) as the only between participant measures did not show any significant effects, all F’s < 3, n.s. That is, boys and girls did not differ in the size that they drew themselves.

A second analysis was conducted on the child-to-sibling size ratio. If the child drew him or herself larger than the sibling, then the size ratio was larger than 1; if the child drew him or herself smaller than the sibling, then the size ratio was smaller than 1. These size ratios ranged from .28 to 3.50, so that some children drew themselves as tiny relative to their largest sibling and others drew themselves as huge compared to the size of their next-sized sibling. An analysis of variance with participant gender and number of siblings between participants showed only a main effect of number of siblings, F(1, 72) = 8.15, p < .01, η² = .10. Children with fewer siblings drew themselves relatively larger than their largest sibling, whereas those with more siblings drew themselves relatively smaller than their largest sibling, with mean size ratios of 1.12 and .79, respectively. That is, the fewer the number of children in the family, the larger the children drew themselves relative to their largest sibling, with a correlation of −.36, p < .005, between these two variables.

The next analysis focused on the size of the drawings of the parents. The size of the figures of mothers and fathers was highly correlated, with a correlation of .81, p < .001. An analysis of variance with size of mother and size of father as within participant measures and child gender and number of siblings between participants showed a main effect of child gender, F(1, 88) = 4.07, p < .05, η² = .04, with boys drawing both their mothers and their fathers larger than girls (M = 12.83 and 14.29 for boys’ drawings of mothers and fathers; M = 11.13 and 12.22 for girls’ drawings of their mothers and fathers). There was also a main effect of parent gender, F(1, 88) = 17.052, p < .001, η² = .16, with fathers being drawn larger than mothers. The respective means were 13.33 cm and 12.09 cm, respectively. There were no other significant effects, all F’s < 3, n.s. Importantly, this pattern did not change when the size of children’s drawings of self or the child-to-sibling size ratio were covaried, though it should be noted that since not all children have identified themselves in the drawings, the number of children included in the analyses with the covariance was smaller than that in the original analysis.

Colour use as an index of gender differentiation

Next, the number of colours children used in their drawings was examined. The majority of children, 60 per cent, used the same single colour for drawing all the figures, with the remaining children using two or more colours. An analysis of variance with child gender and number of siblings between participants found no significant effects, all F’s < 2, n.s.

Inclusion of gender-associated characteristics as an index of gender differentiation

Turning to the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics in the drawings, the first analysis focused on children’s gender differentiation of the children in their drawings. Children were coded dichotomously as differentiating or not differentiating children by gender in terms of gender-associated characteristics, and an analysis of variance with child gender and number of siblings was conducted. This analysis showed only a main effect of gender, F(1, 86) = 12.85, p < .001, η² = .13, such that girls evidenced greater gender differentiation in their drawings of children than boys. The respective means were .63 and .27.

The next analysis focused on children’s differentiation of mothers and fathers in terms of gender-associated characteristics. Children were coded dichotomously as differentiating or not differentiating parents through gender-associated characteristics and an analysis of variance with child gender and number of siblings was conducted. This analysis showed only a main effect of gender, F(1, 88) = 7.88, p < .01, η² = .08, such that girls evidenced greater differentiation between their mother and father in terms of gender-associated characteristics than boys. The respective means were .69 and .37.

To examine whether differentiation in terms of gender-associated characteristics was differentially prevalent in the adult figures and in the child figures, a Chi-Square analysis was conducted on the number of children who differentiated their drawings of children and their drawings of adults in terms of gender-associated characteristics. The Chi Square was significant, χ²(1) = 43.88, p < .001. Forty-one children did not differentiate either children or adults in terms of gender-associated characteristics, 3 only differentiated children in terms of gender-associated characteristics, 10 differentiated only adults in terms of gender-associated characteristics, and 36 differentiated both children and adults in terms of gender-associated characteristics.

Relations between measures of gender differentiation

An important question in this context is whether the three measures that index gender differentiation are related to each other. To address this possibility, the next analysis examined whether the differentiation of mothers and fathers in terms of the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics and their differentiation in colour use was related to the size of the drawings of mothers versus fathers. For this analysis, an analysis of variance in which child gender, number of siblings, differentiation of mothers and fathers in terms of gender-associated characteristics, and colour use were between participants factors, and size of mother and size of father were within participant factors was conducted. This analysis showed the gender effect observed above, F(1, 76) = 9.70, p < .005, η² = .11, which was qualified by an interaction with colour use and parent gender, F(1, 76) = 4.47, p < .05, η² = .06. The means for this interaction are shown in Table 1. As can be seen in the table, the interaction emerged because the size of girls’ figures of parents did not vary as a function of parent gender and colour use, F < 1, n.s., whereas for boys, the interaction between parent gender and colour use was significant, F(1, 40) = 7.15, p < .05, such that boys who did not use a variety of colours in their drawings, drew their fathers larger than their mothers, whereas those who did use a variety of colours in their drawings, drew their parents the same size.

Table 1.

Size of figures, by child gender and use of colour.

	Size of mother		Size of father
	Use of colour
	Single colour	Multiple colours	Single colour	Multiple colours
Boys	12.00	14.64	14.58	14.80
Child gender
Girls	10.64	9.72	11.44	10.93

There was also a main effect of differentiation of parents in terms of gender-associated characteristics, F(1, 76) = 6.31, p < .001, η² = .08, with children who showed no differentiation between parents in terms of gender-associated characteristics drawing both their mother and father smaller (M = 10.34 and 11.67 for figures of mothers and fathers) than children who drew gender-associated characteristics in differentiating their parents in terms of gender (M = 13.16 and 14.20 for figures of mothers and fathers). Finally, regressions were run to see which of the variables, if any, could predict the size of the mother and the size of the father. The following variables were entered: gender, number of siblings, use of colour, the child-to-sibling size ratio, use of gender-associated characteristics in differentiating parents, and use of gender-associated characteristics in differentiating children. For size of the father, two variables entered the equation with an adjusted R² of .14: gender, with a Beta of −.35, and the use of gender-associated characteristics in differentiating mothers and fathers, with a beta of .33, F(2, 69) = 6.95, p < .005. As for size of the mother, three variables entered the equation with an adjusted R² of .21: use of gender-associated characteristics in differentiating mothers and fathers, with a Beta of .37, participant gender, with a Beta of −.34, and number of siblings, with a Beta of .30, F(3, 68) = 7.44, p < .001.

Discussion

This study was conducted to examine the impact of child gender and number of siblings on gender differentiation in children’s drawings of their family. Three measures of gender differentiation were derived from children’s drawings: size of the figures, colour use, and the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics in the drawings. In general, child gender played a significant role, whereas the impact of number of siblings was less significant than anticipated.

First, addressing the use of colour, the majority of children in this study used a single pencil or colour so that the gender of the figures drawn could not generally be differentiated on the basis of colour. Moreover, children’s gender or the number of siblings did not impact their use of colour. The question of colour use has not apparently been addressed in this context and represents an important avenue for future research on gender differentiation.

As for size of the drawings, children’s drawings of themselves did not vary in size as a function of their own gender or the number of siblings in the family. This pattern is in line with some studies which found no differences between boys and girls in the size of their drawings of themselves (e.g. Payne, 1996), and contrasts with studies which found that boys and girls differ in the size of their self drawings (e.g. Cherney et al., 2006). It should be noted, though, that such studies have not examined gender differences within the context of family drawings so definitive conclusions as to gender differences in the size of self drawings await future research.

However, the size that the child drew him or herself relative to the next largest sibling, varied as a function of the number of siblings. Thus, the fewer the number of children in the family, the larger the children drew themselves relative to their siblings. This pattern makes sense because the fewer the number of children, the more likely are the siblings to be younger or closer in age to the participant and vice versa. This size ratio measure has not been used in previous research and represents an important avenue for future research in this domain.

Turning to children’s drawings of their parents, boys drew their mothers and their fathers larger than girls. This pattern could reflect the fact that parents are stricter disciplinarians with their sons, a pattern that appears to emerge in children’s books as well (Brugeilles et al., 2002). In addition, fathers were drawn larger than mothers, a pattern that replicates other research with children of this age (e.g. O’Brien and Patton, 1974), and may also reflect perceptions of fathers as disciplinary figures. Contrary to the hypothesis, though, mothers in this sample of Jewish-Orthodox families were not drawn larger than fathers by children of either gender, despite mothers’ more dominant role as the primary caretakers of preschoolers. This may, in part, reflect the greater importance accorded to the educational role of fathers and the subordinate role of women in Jewish Orthodoxy, in which men start their day with the controversial prayer ‘Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman’.

However, it should be noted that size inversion in which mothers were drawn larger than fathers, was evident in 24 of the 92 children, and 6 children drew both parents the same size, suggesting that in some of these families, mothers were perceived as more dominant than fathers. Importantly, this pattern did not vary by child gender, and did not change when size of children’s drawings of self, or the child-to-sibling size ratio, were covaried. Importantly, in terms of the size of mothers relative to fathers, children’s drawings of fathers were only about 10 per cent larger than those of mothers; this is actually quite close to the actual height difference between men and women, which in the United States if about 8.5 per cent (McGraw and Wong, 1992) and in Israel about 7 per cent (www.disabled-world.com-calculators-charts-height-chart.php).

As for differentiation in children’s inclusion of gender-associated characteristics, the analyses focused on children’s gender differentiation among the children, and between the adults, in their drawings. As in other research (e.g. Cherney et al., 2006), girls were found to differentiate both children and parents more by including gender-associated characteristics in their drawings than boys. However, boys have generally been found to avoid drawing feminine markers (Goldner and Levi, 2014), so this effect may in fact reflect such avoidance. Importantly, although the majority of children did not include gender-associated characteristics in their drawings, as hypothesized, more children differentiated parents’ drawings than children’s drawings in terms of their inclusion of gender-associated characteristics.

A further important question addressed earlier concerned possible relations between the three measures that index gender differentiation: size of the figures drawn, colour use, and the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics. Specifically, do children who differentiate their mothers and fathers in terms of gender-associated characteristics and who vary in colour use, also differentiate their drawings in the size of mothers versus fathers? First, whereas girls’ drawings of mothers and fathers did not differ in size as a function of colour use, boys who did not use multiple colours in their drawings drew their fathers larger than their mothers, but those who did use multiple colours in their drawings, drew their parents the same size. That is, boys used either colour or size, but not both, to differentiate parents by gender. This suggests that colour and size independently index gender differentiation of figures in children’s drawings. Yet, given the relatively small number of children who used multiple colours in their drawings, this pattern suggests that the use of colour to differentiate figures by gender is a later development, an issue that requires longitudinal research to be further clarified.

In addition, those children who showed no differentiation between their parents in terms of the inclusion of gender-associated characteristics, drew their mothers and fathers smaller than children who showed gender differentiation in terms of such characteristics. This suggests that children simultaneously differentiate their parents in terms of size and in terms of gender-associated characteristics such as hair and clothing, although again, the sequence of emergence of such differentiation cannot be determined without conducting longitudinal research.

Finally, regression analyses showed that both adult differentiation in terms of gender-associated characteristics and participant gender determined the size of the mother and father figures drawn. But the number of siblings also entered the equation for size of the mother figure, indicating that mothers are perceived as more imposing figures when they oversee a larger household. Thus, family constellation was directly implicated in children’s drawings in that the number of siblings was significant for the child-to-sibling size ratio, as well as in the regression analysis conducted on size of the mother figure. Notably, though, the size of children’s drawings of themselves did not enter the equations, suggesting that it is the perceived size of mothers and fathers that serve as anchors in children’s drawing of their families. The fact that the size of the drawings of mothers and fathers were highly correlated indicates that they are considered jointly in terms of children’s drawings.

Overall, then, the data suggest that children use colour, size, and gender-associated characteristics to index their emergent ability to differentiate parents by gender in their family drawings. The fact that more children evidenced gender-differentiated parent figures than gender-differentiated child figures indicates that adult gender-associated characteristics play a more important role in children’s psychological worlds than do child gender-associated characteristics. This is especially remarkable given the prominent role that the self-identification of gender is accorded in theories of gender development (e.g. Kohlberg, 1966; Tobin et al., 2010). Future research will have to examine this issue more directly.

More generally, the data indicate that although siblings play a relatively minor role in determining the nature of children’s family drawings, families constitute fertile grounds for acquiring gender differentiation and that their impact on children’s self-identification as males and females needs to be more analytically examined, both within the context of children’s drawings and otherwise.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Karen Zivan for collecting the data for this study.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Rachel Karniol

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