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A mother’s intuition? The link between mothers’ and fathers’ gender essentialist beliefs and their parental involvement

par Lamprianidou, Elli-Anastasia ;Eira Nunes, Cindy ;Gaunt, Ruth;Venard, Gaëlle;Van Petegem, Stijn Julien
Référence Belgian Association of Psychological Sciences Annual Meeting (Brussels, Belgium)
Publication Non publié, 2024-05-30

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

In this study we used gender essentialism as a lens to examine culturally embedded gender inequalities between mothers and fathers. Gender essentialism pertains to the belief that men and women are biologically distinct, and thus better suited for different societal roles and behaviors (Bem, 1993), including parental roles (Hays, 1996). The present study investigated the relationships between mothers’ and fathers’ gender essentialist beliefs and their involvement in positive (i.e., parental responsiveness, autonomy support) and negative parenting practices (overprotection, controlling parenting). Our sample consisted of 1,260 Belgian heterosexual parents (Mage = 49.6 years old; 62% of mothers) of adolescents. We examined relationships through actor-partner interdependence modeling, yielding evidence for several actor effects. For both mothers and fathers, the endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs was related to more controlling and overprotective parenting. In addition, among fathers, gender essentialist beliefs were associated with less responsiveness and autonomy support, while these relationships were not significant for mothers. There were no significant partner effects. These findings highlight the importance of considering parental gender beliefs when studying parenting, as these can play an important role in understanding the quality of parents’ involvement in their children’s lives.