Abstract
Mothers of 138 boys and 138 girls—almost all middle class Caucasian Californians—rated the relative advantages and disadvantages of children at different ages. These broad trends held true, in general, for both sexes and different birth orders, as well as for an additional rating of “children in general”: (1) Pregnancy: more disadvantages than any other age except adolescence; (2) Ages 2 to 4 or 5: more disadvantages than ages 6 to 11; (3) Ages 6 to 11: a relatively advantageous plateau; (4) Ages 12 to 19: more disadvantages than any earlier age since birth. In general, ratings were toward the “advantages” side, but some analyses suggest that this may have resulted in part from distortion in ratings Boys were rated as having more disadvantages than girls. The predictions that ratings would show more disadvantages (1) with each parity and (2) when made by mothers with larger families received support in comparisons between some subgroups.
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