Gender Role Attitudes and Beliefs and Maternal Gatekeeping: A Meta-Analytic Review

• In Event: Families as Systems and Subsystems

Abstract

As an essential subdimension of coparenting, gatekeeping involves behaviors encouraging or discouraging the coparent from engagement in parenting. Maternal gatekeeping is defined as the “preferences and struggles of mothers” to control the role of fathers in terms of involvement with housework and childcare activities (Allen & Hawkins, 1999; Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2015). Hence, mothers may block or promote fathers’ involvement in parenting through gate closing or gate opening behaviors (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2008). Several studies revealed that greater maternal gate closing is associated with lower quality and quantity of father involvement in parenting (Fagan & Barnett, 2003; Stevenson et al., 2014), whereas greater gate opening is related to higher levels of father involvement in childcare (Schoppe-Sullivan et al., 2008; Zvara et al., 2013). Considering the indisputable role of engaged fathering in promoting children’s positive cognitive, language, and social-emotional development (Cabrera et al., 2007; Hastings et al., 2008; Kochanska et al., 2008), understanding maternal gatekeeping is essential to understanding fathering behavior, and therefore, children’s development.

Gender roles are defined by individuals’, groups’, and societies’ expectations, values, and beliefs associated with a particular sex (Blackstone, 2003). Research has revealed that attitudes in favor of traditional gender roles and beliefs in biological essentialism are associated with higher maternal gate closing (Deutsch & Gaunt, 2020). The authors will conduct a meta-analytic review of the gatekeeping research literature since the first time the term was used (Beitel, 1989) to assess the associations of gender role attitudes and beliefs with maternal gate closing and maternal gate opening. Most typically, mothers report on their own gatekeeping behavior and fathers’ report on mothers’ gatekeeping behavior. Using gender as a moderator will contribute to the analysis to see how results might vary by mothers’ and fathers’ reports.

All steps of the data analysis are pre-registered on OSF. A literature search was conducted using PsycINFO, PsychNet, PubMed, and ProQuest with the following keywords: trad* and “maternal gatekeeping” or “parental gatekeeping” or “paternal gatekeeping” or “maternal gate closing” or “maternal gateclosing” or “maternal gate opening” or “maternal gateopening”. The search retrieved 16 research reports that included 19 independent samples of 7,918 participants (see Figure 1). Studies were considered relevant if they examined the effects of traditional attitudes and beliefs on gatekeeping. When there are both mother and father reports in the study, they were considered separate studies as they have independent samples except for the ones reporting a single effect size with a paired samples t-test. By using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software, we will code the following characteristics for each study: (a) gender of participants (for paired data), (b) mean age of participants, and (c) publication status (published or unpublished), (d) study type (self-report or observational). To interpret the data, we will use the correlation coefficient, denoted by r, as the effect-size estimate. When multiple measures of the same dependent variable are reported, we will use the average effect size in the meta-analysis. We will also conduct moderator analyses, focusing on the age of participants, study type, and parent gender.

Authors

• F Kubra Aytac, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Jane Schoppe-Sullivan, Ohio State University