Parental gender socialization across diverse families: Interdependencies with sex hormones, family processes and socio-political context
Final Report Abstract
The pace of change towards gender egalitarian beliefs and practices have varied across domains in modern post-industrial societies. This has been conceptualised as an incomplete gender revolution. Possible explanations relate to persistent gender essentialist beliefs and increasing self-expressive values on the one hand and to neuroscientific research on biological sex differences on the other. This project sought to illuminate the process of intergenerational change in gender relations by investigating how children form their gender beliefs, interests and occupational aspirations across different family forms, gender cultures and considering the interplay with prenatal androgen exposure. By combining sociological, psychological and neuroscientific theories, the project has proposed interdisciplinary theoretical conceptualizations of gender socialization. The project used representative secondary data sets of children and adolescents in Germany, England, Sweden and the Netherlands, which show interesting historical variations in their gender equality policies. The findings of the six published paper in combination provide a number of novel insights on children’s and young people’s gender beliefs, interests and aspirations. They generally confirm theoretical predictions on the role modelling effects of different work and care arrangements practiced by parents, for instance also in the process of parental relationship breakdown. However, they also underline the importance of considering the interdependence of parental socialization with prenatal androgen exposure as well as with influences among peers in schools and of the first romantic relationships. For instance, for young women, romantic relationship experiences are significantly associated with slower increases in egalitarianism. Adolescents were generally found to significantly adapt their own gender beliefs to those of their parents, friends, and classmates. In cases of opposing beliefs, adolescents tended to adapt more strongly to whoever held more egalitarian views, possibly aligning with more widespread norms of egalitarianism. Our results also indicate that adolescents of immigrant origin held less egalitarian gender ideologies but aspired to somewhat less gender-typical occupations than their majority peers. When it comes to comparisons across political and cultural contexts, the findings in several papers point to striking similarities across the four countries in the relevance of parents and peers for the formation of gender ideologies among minority and majority populations.
Publications
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Socialisation Influences on Gender Ideologies of Immigrant and Native Youth in Germany, England, Sweden and the Netherlands. Sex Roles, 85(3-4), 113-127.
Sánchez, Guerrero Laia & Schober, Pia S.
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Breaking with traditions? How parental separation affects adolescents’ gender ideologies in the UK. Journal of Family Studies, 29(5), 2173-2194.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Gambaro, Ludovica & Schober, Pia S.
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A Time of Great Change: How Parents, Friends, and Classmates Shape Adolescents’ Attitudes towards the Gender Division of Labor. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 52(9), 1811-1828.
Sánchez, Guerrero Laia; Schober, Pia S. & van, der Vleuten Maaike
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Gender ideologies across the transition to adulthood in Germany: How early romantic relationships slow down the egalitarian trend. Advances in Life Course Research, 58, 100574.
Wilhelm, Janna; Schober, Pia S. & Sánchez, Guerrero Laia
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Gender typicality of occupational aspirations among immigrant and native youth: the role of gender ideology, educational aspirations, and work values. Frontiers in Sociology, 8.
Gambaro, Ludovica; Wilhelm, Janna & Schober, Pia Sophia
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Prenatal Exposure to Androgens and Gender Socialisation Effects on Children’s Academic Interests. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 76(3), 681-712.
Sánchez, Guerrero Laia; Schober, Pia S. & Derntl, Birgit
