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Poster #191 - Paternal and maternal beliefs on the father’s and the mother’s influence in Chinese families

Thu, March 21, 4:00 to 5:15pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Background. The father’s roles in child development are increasingly recognized, yet research on children’s gender socialization still focuses almost exclusively on mothers’ beliefs and socialization practices. Most studies on parental gender socialization also examined explicit gender socialization practices instead of underlying, implicit gender beliefs, such as how parents think of the father’s and the mother’s respective significance for child development.
The present study aims to fill these gaps by investigating how Chinese fathers and mothers understand the magnitude and the quality of paternal and maternal influences on child development. China is a particularly interesting research site to study paternal and maternal gender socialization given the complicated, inconsistent gender values in its macrosystem which result from large-scale social changes in China’s modern history.
Methods. We drew on interview data from father-mother pairs from 54 urban Chinese parents with 10-year-old children (54.6% boys) who were part of a longitudinal project on social change, parenting, and child development in China (Way et al., 2013). Mothers and fathers were interviewed separately about their perception of paternal and maternal influence on sons and daughters, among other topics. Trained research assistants coded selected sections of the transcripts following a coding manual that emerged from repeated reading and discussion of the interview transcripts by the authors.
Results. 1) The paternal and maternal involvement in childrearing tasks were highly gendered. Fathers were more often described than the mothers as involved in physical activities and guidance, and the mothers were more often described than fathers as involved in school work, daily care, communication, and emotional support (Table 1).
2) Participants believed that the father and the mother make different contribution to child development (40.6% mothers and 31.5% fathers), and that the father has greater and more positive influence than the mother. One-fifth (20.4%) of the participating mothers believed that the father has greater influence on the child whereas only 7.4% mothers believed that the mother has greater influence; a greater proportion of fathers (16.7%) believed that the mother has greater influence than those who believed that the father has greater influence (9.3%). Mothers (40.7%), in particular, considered the father a positive influence on child development, as opposed to only 5.6% mothers who considered the mother a positive influence (Table 2).
3) The participating parents believed that father have particularly positive influences on boys (40.0%) and the mother has negative influence on boys (30.5%). On the contrary, both parents were believed to provide predominantly positive influence on their daughters.
Discussion. Our results suggest the father’s contribution as guide and physical playmate were more valued in today’s Chinese families than the mother’s involvement in day-to-day childcare and emotional support. Fathers were also believed to cultivate “positive” male traits in their children, especially sons, whereas the mothers were believed to exert “negative” female influences. These findings reflect an overall devaluation of feminine involvement and traits in contemporary Chinese families, which may be explained by the explicit or hidden patriarchy in mainstream Chinese ideologies. Implications of our findings for child development are discussed.

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