Don't Do What I Do, Do What I Say!

I heard that statement frequently as I was growing into young adulthood. I thought it meant not to make the same mistakes that my parents had made. After conducting research on the effects of early childhood themes on future goals, this statement has much more meaning for me. As part of my doctoral work I studied the effects of childhood messages on women's eventual educational and career choices. What I discovered is that parental typical gender role models had little effect on career and educational choices. What did have a powerful effect was parental expectations. It was not what the parents did with their lives that impacted these women to choose higher education and leadership roles, but the expectations communicated by the parents. Messages in the early childhood homes like "WHEN you go to college rather than IF you go to college" had a lifelong impact. For more information on this study you can access one publication at http://www.pascd.org/women.cfm