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Parents’ gender role beliefs and their involvement across 11 countries: Unraveling the role of gender inequality

par Lamprianidou, Elli-Anastasia ; [et al.]
Référence Belgian Association of Psychological Sciences Annual Meeting (Brussels, Belgium)
Publication Non publié, 2025-05-26

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

This cross-national study examines how parents’ gender essentialist beliefs relate to their parental involvement across 11 countries with varying levels of gender inequality. Gender essentialism proposes that women are inherently more qualified for child-rearing than men. We investigated how fathers’ and mothers’ gender essentialist beliefs relate to their positive (i.e., responsiveness) and negative (i.e., overprotection) parental involvement in a sample of 5754 parents (Mage = 48.58, 28.8% fathers) of adolescents (Mage = 17.35, 54% girls). Additionally, we explored the role of the sociocultural context, by examining the indirect link between country-level gender inequality and parents’ involvement through parents’ endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs. Preregistered multi-level analyses indicated that across all countries, stronger endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs related to higher overprotection for both fathers and mothers. No association was found between fathers’ gender essentialist beliefs and their responsiveness, while for mothers, stronger endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs related to lower responsiveness. Further, we found that for both fathers and mothers, stronger endorsement of gender essentialist beliefs accounted for the relationship between higher country-level gender inequality and higher overprotection. For responsiveness, we found that higher gender inequality related specifically to lower maternal responsiveness and this link was partially explained by mothers’ gender essentialist beliefs, while no relationship was found for fathers. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of considering both individual gender role beliefs and the broader sociocultural context to understand parenting practices—as these may be shaped both by personal beliefs and societal expectations surrounding parenthood.