The Relative Importance of Paternal Versus Maternal Involvement for Chinese Adolescents’ Gender-Typed Traits

Jiefeng Ying, Jialin Shi, Sihan Liu, Joyce J. Endendijk, Xinchun Wu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Adolescence is a crucial period for gender socialization. While the theoretical link between parental involvement (i.e., the degree of parental engagement in parenting and child-rearing activities) and adolescents’ gender-typed traits (i.e., masculinity and femininity) is clear, the potential different influences of paternal and maternal involvement on boys and girls have yet to be explored. This study examined the moderating role of adolescents’ gender in the relations between parental involvement and adolescents’ gender-typed traits. A total of 512 Chinese adolescents (40.8% boys; Mage = 15.73 years, SD = 1.50) participated in this study and completed self-report measures of paternal involvement, maternal involvement, masculinity, and femininity. The results indicated that both higher maternal and paternal involvement were significantly associated with higher levels of adolescents’ masculinity in the total sample, but only higher maternal involvement was significantly associated with higher levels of femininity. However, multi-group comparison analysis showed that the association between paternal involvement and masculinity was only significant in boys. There were no significant differences between boys and girls in the association between maternal involvement and adolescent femininity or masculinity, nor in the association between paternal involvement and femininity. These findings challenge the narrow view that links the absence of certain gender-typed traits in adolescents solely to the lack of a certain parental figure. The findings highlight the significance of joint participation between fathers and mothers, emphasizing their crucial roles in fostering balanced development of gender-typed traits among adolescents.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1866-1878
Number of pages13
JournalSex Roles
Volume90
Issue number12
Early online date28 Oct 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.

Funding

We would like to thank the staff and administrators at our participating school sites. We are especially indebted to the adolescents and their parents whose participation made this research possible.

FundersFunder number
Beijing Municipal Social Science Foundation

    Keywords

    • Adolescents
    • Femininity
    • Gender differences
    • Gender role socialization
    • Gender-typed traits
    • Masculinity
    • Parental involvement

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'The Relative Importance of Paternal Versus Maternal Involvement for Chinese Adolescents’ Gender-Typed Traits'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this