The Gendered Family Process Model: An Integrative Framework of Gender in the Family

Abstract

This article reviews and integrates research on gender-related biological, cognitive, and social processes that take place in or between family members, resulting in a newly developed gendered family process (GFP) model. The GFP model serves as a guiding framework for research on gender in the family context, calling for the integration of biological, social, and cognitive factors. Biological factors in the model are prenatal, postnatal, and pubertal androgen levels of children and parents, and genetic effects on parent and child gendered behavior. Social factors are family sex composition (i.e., parent sex, sexual orientation, marriage status, sibling sex composition) and parental gender socialization, such as modeling, gender-differentiated parenting, and gender talk. Cognitive factors are implicit and explicit gender-role cognitions of parents and children. Our review and the GFP model confirm that gender is an important organizer of family processes, but also highlight that much is still unclear about the mechanisms underlying gender-related processes within the family context. Therefore, we stress the need for (1) longitudinal studies that take into account the complex bidirectional relationship between parent and child gendered behavior and cognitions, in which within-family comparisons (comparing behavior of parents toward a boy and a girl in the same family) are made instead of between-family comparisons (comparing parenting between all-boy families and all-girl families, or between mixed-gender families and same-gender families), (2) experimental studies on the influence of testosterone on human gender development, (3) studies examining the interplay between biology with gender socialization and gender-role cognitions in humans.

Relationships Among Emerging Adult Psychological Problems, Maltreatment, and Parental Psychopathology: Moderation by Parent–Child Relationship Quality

“…This model specifies that parenting behaviors and relationships are differentiated based on both parent and child gender dyads, leading to different relationships among these dyads. The differentiation of effects based on parent and child gender found by the current study is consistent with this model and contributes to calls for research on within family gendered relationship differentiation as compared to between family relationship comparisons (see Endendijk et al., ).…”

“…It may be the case that daughters are more vulnerable to the negative effects of parental psychopathology regardless of the relationship quality. These results related to specific effects based on parent-child gender dyads are largely consistent with the Gendered Family Process model, which emphasizes the different roles that individual parents play during child development as well as the effects of parent and child gender role expectations and biological sex differences (Endendijk, Groeneveld, & Mesman, 2018). This model specifies that parenting behaviors and relationships are differentiated based on both parent and child gender dyads, leading to different relationships among these dyads.…”

Socialization of Gender Stereotypes Related to Attributes and Professions Among Young Spanish School-Aged Children

“…Here we can find the traditional learning theories, which indicate that the different environments in which children grow up reinforce and punish behaviors associated with sex, especially by significant adults (family and teachers) (Eccles et al, 2000;Beaman et al, 2006) but also by peers and equals (Witt, 2000). Social learning theories further indicate that children learn what is appropriate for their sex by observation and by imitating the behaviors of the people they identify with, who are more often of the same sex, and by observing the reactions of the environment to the models' behaviors through a process of vicarious learning (Endendijk et al, 2018).…”

Investigating friendship qualities in high ability or achieving, typically-developing, ADHD, and twice-exceptional youth

“…This dynamic may contribute to lower perceived closeness. Alternatively, boys may be socialized to behave differently than girls (Endendijk, Groeneveld, M. G., & Mesman, 2018). Additionally, no differences were observed related to conflict (negative friendship qualities) between boys and girls.…”

“…These findings may be partially explained by societal (macrosystems) expectations about the behavior of girls and boys in friendships. These expectations affect the way in which parents (Endendijk et al, 2018) and teachers (Allard, 2004) differentially interact with and coach children.…”