Abstract
Themes of violence and caring in the spontaneous play of preschool-aged children in response to a revised version of the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) were analyzed in relation to their social behavior in child-care settings. All children (n = 66, 39 boys) lived in post-divorce families, primarily in the custody of their mothers. Some story enactments of violence predicted negative social behavior in child-care for both boys and girls. Other story enactments were strongly associated with gender and did not uniformly predict social behavior, suggesting that gender socialization plays a significant role in children's play representations of violence and caring. Implications for children's development and the interpretation of children's play behavior are discussed.
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Page, T., Bretherton, I. Gender Differences in Stories of Violence and Caring by Preschool Children in Post-Divorce Families: Implications for Social Competence. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 20, 485–508 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CASW.0000003140.44020.ba
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CASW.0000003140.44020.ba