A neurocognitive approach to studying processes underlying parents’ gender socialization

Abstract

Parental gender socialization refers to ways in which parents teach their children social expectations associated with gender. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying gender socialization. An overview of cognitive and neural processes underlying parental gender socialization is provided. Regarding cognitive processes, evidence exists that parents’ implicit and explicit gender stereotypes, attitudes, and gendered attributions are implicated in gender socialization. Other cognitive factors, such as intergroup attitudes, gender essentialism, internal motivation for parenting without gender stereotypes, gender identity, and conflict resolution are theoretically relevant mechanisms underlying gender socialization, but need further investigation. Regarding neural processes, studies demonstrated that attentional processing, conflict monitoring, behavior regulation, and reward processing might underlie stereotypes and biased behavior. However, more research is necessary to test whether these neural processes are also related to parental gender socialization. Based on this overview, a framework is presented of neural and cognitive factors that were theoretically or empirically related to gender socialization.

A Review Study About Gender Differences in Expressive Language: Spoken And Written Language Differences

“…As an infant grows up and becomes a preschool child, these processes end up with enlarged gender differences in emotional expressiveness that are in line with traditional gender roles. Especially, parents play a crucial role in shaping emotional expressiveness of their children (Endendijk et al, 2023;Portengen et al, 2023;Yaffe, 2023). It can also be speculated that parental differential attitudes and behavior for male and female children may not only influence their emotional expression.…”