Generic references to gender predict essentialism and stereotyping even when they express counter-stereotypic ideas

Gender essentialism and stereotyping emerge early in childhood, even though parents rarely discuss essentialist ideas with young children and often try to communicate egalitarian messages. Here we considered that parents’ generic references to gender, which subtly convey that gender reflects a natural kind, could contribute to the transmission of harmful beliefs even when they express counter-stereotypic ideas. In this pre-registered study, we used unmoderated remote research methods to record 192 parent-child dyads (children ages 3–5) talking about gender and assess children’s gender essentialism and stereotypes over time. Parents’ generic references to gender predicted children’s essentialism and stereotyping, even when this language expressed neutral and counter-stereotypic content. These findings suggest that highlighting specific counter-stereotypical examples (e.g., “That girl is great at soccer!”) might be more effective than counter-stereotypical generic sentences (e.g., “Girls are good at soccer too!”) at mitigating the development of gender essentialism and stereotyping in childhood.