Parents’ Gender Role Attitudes and Child Adjustment: The Mediating Role of Parental Involvement

Abstract

Parents’ gender role attitudes are pertinent to child adjustment. Importantly, parental involvement may help to explain the link between parents’ gender role attitudes and child adjustment. In this study, we investigated the differential contributions of mothers’ and fathers’ gender role attitudes on child adjustment, with the quality of mother and father involvement as mediators. Given that parental involvement is gender-differentiated in the Chinese context, actor and partner effects of mothers’ and fathers’ gender role attitudes on parental involvement were also examined. Participants were 211 maritally intact families from China, including mothers and fathers of children aged 4 to 7 years old. The findings based on structural equation modeling identified the actor and partner effects of fathers’ greater traditional gender role attitudes on a lower quality of mother and father involvement, whereas mothers’ greater traditional gender role attitudes were only related to a lower quality of mother involvement. Greater mother and father involvement was further associated with children’s greater prosocial behavior. The findings suggested the mediating role of the combined mother and father involvement between fathers’ gender role attitudes and children’s prosocial behavior. This study underscores the interdependent nature of mothers’ and fathers’ behavior on child adjustment. The findings inform researchers and practitioners of the importance of reducing both parents’ traditional gender role attitudes and enhancing the quality of parental involvement to foster child adjustment.

The impact of family involvement on students’ social-emotional development: the mediational role of school engagement

“…In the investigation led by Wang and Cheung (2023), comparable trends were noted, providing partial support for mother and father involvement being related to higher levels of child adjustment. More precisely, mother and father involvement showed a positive correlation with children's prosocial behavior.…”

“…Another body of research supports the link between family involvement and students' social-emotional development while addressing seemingly contradictory findings (Puccioni, 2018;Ray and colleagues 2020;Trost and colleagues 2020;Wang & Cheung, 2023). Parent-teacher cooperation activities positively predicted children's language and socialemotional skills at the age of 3 (Cohen & Anders, 2019).…”