ABSTRACT
A Boston Globe reporter set out to learn the impact of work upon people in the 1970’s. This chapter explains about children’s work orientations have been restricted to matters of cognition and evaluation. Work also summons up feelings in people. Feelings are inextricably linked to perceptions and beliefs, both as responses to such stimuli and as influences upon future cognitions. There is also a strong connection between affective states and attitudes; some would even equate the two. The chapter examines the rather complex phenomenon of stereotyping behavior, with an eye toward establishing the nature and extent of children’s feelings with regard to work. It explores two distinct, but often closely related, aspects of children’s orientations: work-related feelings and the stereotyping of occupations by sex. Children from the earliest grades at which we tested very definitely showed signs of occupational stereotyping on the basis of sex.
