Gender differentiation in the family drawings of Israeli, Jewish-orthodox preschoolers

Preschool children from Israeli, Jewish-Orthodox families with an average of four children per family drew their families. Three aspects of gender differentiation in children’s drawings were assessed in relation to children’s gender and number of siblings: size of figures, colour use, and inclusion of gender-associated characteristics. Size of drawings reflected gender differentiation, with fathers being drawn larger than mothers. Boys, and children with more siblings, drew both their mothers and their fathers larger. Colour use did not differ by children’s gender or number of siblings. Girls evidenced greater gender differentiation in their drawings, including more gender-associated characteristics than boys, both in their drawings of children, and in their drawings of adults. Finally, children who showed no differentiation between parents in terms of gender-associated characteristics drew both mothers and fathers smaller than children who showed such gender differentiation, and boys who did not use a variety of colours in their drawings drew their fathers larger than their mothers, whereas those who used a variety of colours, drew their parents the same size, indicating that the measures of gender differentiation are related. The results were discussed in terms of children’s emerging gender differentiation of self and others in large families.

Assessing attachment in school-aged children: Do the School-Age Assessment of Attachment and Family Drawings work together as complementary tools?

Aims: Our goal was to identify an assessment package that could improve treatment planning for troubled children and their families. To assess the validity of our tools, we tested the relations among the School-Age Assessment of Attachment, the Family Drawing and children’s risk status. We used the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation to interpret the assessments in the hope of identifying a gradient of risk, and explore whether a new coding method improved the validity of Family Drawings and their utility as a tool to complement the School-Age Assessment of Attachment. Method: The participants were 89 children, aged between 5 and 12 years; 32 children were involved with mental health services or child protection. Each child completed a School-Age Assessment of Attachment and a Family Drawing. Results: Both assessments differentiated between clinical and normative referrals with moderate effect sizes when dichotomizing risk versus non-risk attachment. When the analysis incorporated a gradient of six attachment classifications, the effect sizes decreased, but specificity of risk increased. Conclusions: The School-Age Assessment of Attachment had greater validity for discriminating risk, and type of risk, than the Family Drawings. With a School-Age Assessment of Attachment and family history, the Family Drawing can provide information about distress that some children do not provide verbally. Integration of the two assessment tools alongside information about parental and family functioning appears to be the key to formulating children’s problems.