Poster #58 - Parental Antecedents of Children’s Adherence to Maladaptive Masculinity Norms: A 9-year Longitudinal Study of Urban Chinese Families

• In Event: Poster Session 11

Abstract

A growing body of literature shows that adherence to maladaptive aspects of Western masculinity norms, including lacking emotional vulnerability, not seeking support from others, and exaggerated physical toughness, is associated with poorer psychological and social outcomes (e.g., APA, 2018). While existing research suggests that parental gender beliefs and caregiving behaviors might influence the development of children’s gendered behaviors (see Ruble et al., 2006), little is known about the developmental origins of individual differences in adherence to maladaptive masculinity norms. The current study aims to address this gap and presents a longitudinal investigation of how parental gender beliefs and maternal sensitivity during infancy may affect children’s adherence to maladaptive masculinity norms during middle childhood.

We drew data from a 9-year longitudinal study of 440 urban Chinese families (48.40% with daughters). At 14 and 24 months, mothers were invited to complete lab-based interaction tasks with their child while being videotaped. Parental questionnaires were collected at 14 and 24 months and children completed questionnaires at 10 years. We assessed parental gender beliefs using a four item-4-point scale, adapted from Hoffman and Kloska (1995) (e.g., “It is more important to foster independence for boys than for girls”.) Cronbach’s alphas for mothers’ and fathers’ report were both .60. Maternal sensitivity was assessed based on mothers’ contingency and consistency of response to child’s signals/needs during mother-child interactions at 14 and 24 months. Following a widely used paradigm in attachment research (NICHD 1999, 2003), we coded maternal sensitivity on a 5-point scale on three dimensions: following the lead, intrusiveness and positive regard. All videos were double coded by two native Nanjing researchers (ICCs = .80-.93). The internal consistency for sensitivity at 14 and 24 months was .70 and .89 respectively. We assessed children’s adherence to masculinity with Gender-typed Attitudes with Peers Scale (GAPS), a measure previously used in Chinese adolescents (Gupta et al., 2013; Rogers, 2020). This measure assesses children’s masculine behaviors in context of friendship, including acting tough, not asking help in front of friends, and not showing emotional vulnerabilities with friend. Sample items include “I do not let it show to my friends when my feelings are hurt.” The Cronbach’s alpha of this measure was .65.

Analyses were run with the full information maximum likelihood estimation (FIML). Multiple regression results indicate that while parental gender beliefs had trivial effects on children’s masculinity 9 years later (B =.09, p=.190), maternal sensitivity robustly predicted children’s masculinity (B = -.19, p=.005) above and beyond parental gender beliefs and education. Moreover, there was a significant gender interaction effect of maternal sensitivity on children’s adherence to masculinity (B =-.25, p=.014; see Figure 1). Follow-up analyses showed that the simple slope of maternal sensitivity was negative and statistically significant for boys B =-.33, p<.001) but not for girls (B =.01, p=.905). This study provides the first longitudinal data on the antecedents of adherence to maladaptive masculinity norms and demonstrates that sensitive parenting may have long-term protective effects on boys’ adherence to harmful gender norms.

Authors

• Rui Yang, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Theodore Waters, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Yufei Gu, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Niobe Way, New York University

• Victoria Zhu, New York University Abu Dhabi
  Presenting Author

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University