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Abstract

Male and female college students (N = 106) in the developmental stage of transition to young adulthood (mean age = 19.9 yr.) were asked to imagine themselves at midlife in three life settings: work, personal relationships/family, and leisure. For each setting they described themselves on the instrumental and expressive scales of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire and on scales of agentic and communal competencies. Subjects anticipated more instrumental traits, more agentic competency, and less communal competency in work settings than in personal relationships, with no differences between men and women. Gender and setting interacted for expressiveness: women anticipated more expressive traits than men in personal relationships, with no difference in the other settings. The anticipated traits and competencies of these subjects were related more to setting than to gender. This may reflect a shift in the definition of sex-role boundaries in American culture.

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Young Adults' Expectations about Sex-Roles in Midlife

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