par Eira Nunes, Cindy 
;Lamprianidou, Elli-Anastasia ;Van Petegem, Stijn Julien
Référence European Conference on Developmental Psychology (Turku, Finland)
Publication Non publié, 2023-08-29
;Lamprianidou, Elli-Anastasia ;Van Petegem, Stijn Julien Référence European Conference on Developmental Psychology (Turku, Finland)
Publication Non publié, 2023-08-29
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | Parents’ beliefs about parenting roles and norms appear to influence how they behave and perceive themselves as parents (Meyer & Gelman, 2016). In this study, we aimed to better understand how adherence to certain social beliefs may shape parenting practices and family relationships. Specifically, we focused on parents’ adherence to gender essentialism, which involves beliefs that women are biologically better suited to parenting than men. We hypothesized that the adherence to these beliefs might influence mothers’ and fathers’ behaviors, as well as those of their partners. Therefore, we investigated the dynamics between parental adherence to essentialism and their own and their partners’ parenting and coparenting practices. This study was drawn from the SAFE-SORRY project, a broad project comprising several studies exploring contemporary parenting and its macro-contextual determinants. We used the first wave of a longitudinal study assessing parents of adolescents. Our sample currently consists of 93 dyads of parents around 50 years old (M = 48.4, SD = 4.7 for mothers; M = 50.2, SD=5.5 for fathers). Their adolescent children were on average 16.5 years old (SD = 0.69) and 55.5% were girls. For this study, we focused on six measures assessed for both mothers and fathers: parent’s endorsement of essentialist beliefs, perceived coparenting support, and need-supportive parenting (autonomy support and responsiveness) and need-frustrating parenting (parental control and anxious overprotection). We conducted actor-partner interdependence modeling (Kenny et al., 2006) to estimate the mutual associations between mothers’ and fathers’ essentialist beliefs on the one hand, and their perceived coparenting support and parenting practices on the other hand. Five models were conducted for coparenting and the four parenting practices separately.Preliminary results showed significant associations between essentialist beliefs and parenting, as well as between essentialist beliefs and coparenting. We found several actor effects of father’s adherence to essentialism. Specifically, it related to less autonomy support, less responsiveness, more parental control, and more overprotection. We also found statistically significant associations for mothers. Indeed, mothers’ essentialist beliefs were associated positively to their own overprotective behaviors and negatively their report of coparenting support (i.e., actor effects). Only one significant partner effect was identified. It appeared that fathers’ essentialist beliefs were positively associated with mothers’ controlling parenting (i.e., partner effect).In other words, fathers who adhered to essentialist beliefs about parenting appeared to adopt less need-supportive and more need-frustrating parenting (actor effect). They also had partners who were more controlling (partner effect). In addition, mother’s essentialist beliefs were also associated with less perceived coparenting support (actor effect). In conclusion, our results indicate that parents’ representations of parenthood, and thus how they respond to social norms about gender, are related to the way in which they behave as parents and coparents. By extension, personal gender beliefs may influence not only parents’ behaviors but also overall family dynamics. To broaden our findings, we will conduct the final analyses on an estimated sample of 250 dyads. |
