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Examining the interplay between fathers' involvement and mothers' gender essentialist beliefs about parenthood

par Eira Nunes, Cindy ;Lamprianidou, Elli-Anastasia ;Venard, Gaëlle;Van Petegem, Stijn Julien
Référence European Sociological Association
Publication Non publié, 2024-08-29

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Résumé :

Despite changing societal expectations towards fathers’ involvement in family life, important gender disparities persist within most Western countries (Sullivan et al., 2018). Research has increasingly investigated the factors that might hinder fathers’ involvement and try to understand contemporary family dynamics. In this study, we address the question of the potential mechanisms that might underlie this persistent gender gap. We longitudinally tested two hypotheses: (1) mothers’ endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs, according to which fathers are biologically less suited to parenting (Pinho & Gaunt, 2021), would predict less father involvement across time through mothers’ gatekeeping (i.e., maternal behaviors that discourage and control fathers’ involvement in childcare); (2) fathers’ lower involvement would, in turn, predict mothers’ endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs across time. Thereby, we particularly focused on positive types (i.e., responsiveness and autonomy support) and negative types (i.e., overprotective and controlling parenting) of involvement. We used three-wave longitudinal data from 167 heterosexual Belgian couples. Cross-lagged models indicated that mothers’ essentialist beliefs did not significantly predict change in any of the fathers’ parenting practices. However, each of the four parenting dimensions predicted change in mothers’ essentialist beliefs. Nevertheless, when we examined the effect of mothers’ essentialist beliefs (at T1) on fathers’ parenting (at T3) through maternal gatekeeping (at T2), we found evidence for an indirect effect of mothers’ essential beliefs on fathers’ responsiveness, autonomy support, and controlling parenting. In conclusion, our findings highlight that mothers’ gender essentialist beliefs about parenthood and fathers’ parenting may mutually reinforce each other across time.