Eleanor E. Maccoby on the Active Child: Gender Differences and Family Interactions

In her chapter, Dr. Maccoby raises two key questions: Who is affecting whom in family interactions, and how does gender enter the picture? She concludes that concurrent interactions between parents and children cannot reveal whether effects are child-to-parent or parent-to-child, because one cannot bypass the previous history of parent-child interactions. Furthermore, when it comes to gender effects, understanding how boys differ from girls is essentially a matter of understanding parent-child interactions from a dyadic point of view. Our commentary on Dr. Maccoby’s chapter (this volume) will concentrate on two issues: bi-directionality and level of analysis on gender.