U.S. and Chilean Mothers’ Use of Mental References With Infant Girls and Boys: Comparison of Maternal Practices in Gender Socialization via Language in Two Countries

Abstract

Variability in parents’ socialization of gender across countries has been understudied. To address the gap, this study compares U.S. and Chilean mothers’ practices in socialization of gender through use of mental state language. Drawing on 90 Chilean and 52 U.S. mother–infant dyads, we examined variation in the frequencies of mothers’ utterances of five types of mental references—emotion, desire, physiological states, causal talk, and cognition—to determine whether they varied by country and infant gender. Infant age ranged between 10 and 15 months. The frequencies with which both U.S. and Chilean mothers in our sample talked about most mental references did not vary according to infant gender, with the exceptions of causal talk in the United States. Specifically, the U.S. mothers used more causal talk with girls than boys. There were more similarities than differences in maternal use of the mental references in the U.S. and Chilean samples. This study did not observe gendered socialization practices through the use of these mental references in infancy among the U.S. and Chilean mothers. Instead, the current study suggests that, using mothers’ mental references in the child’s first year as the indicator, both gender-neutral and cross-gendered socialization practices emerge in the United States, and only gender-neutral socialization practices emerge in Chile.

Mothers’ Use of Regulatory Talk with Toddlers in Chile and the US: How Do Cultural Values and Children’s Gender Affect Mothers’ Regulatory Talk at 12 and 30 Months?

“…This last outcome is an interesting result, which highlights how gender is an important element within socialization [72,74] and reinforces the results of previous studies that show differences in various aspects of how parents talk to their children depending on gender [31][32][33]. This could be explained by different levels of self-regulation [83,84] and variation in regulation temperament elements [85] in girls versus boys.…”

“…The current research questions concern a specific type of verbal interaction called mentalization or the use of mental state references, and its use in different cultures. This research elaborates on previous studies describing differences in the use of mental state references between Chile and the US, its impact on children's outcomes [61] and the differences in the use of this type of language between girls and boys [33].…”

“…The idea of this paper has also been influenced by a previous study conducted by the same research team, which found that Chilean children show higher levels of selfregulation than US children at 12 months of age [61]. In the same sample, small cultural differences in mothers' use of mental state references with infant boys and girls were identified, using a simple coding system with five categories of mental state references [33]. Specifically, US mothers used more causal talks with girls than with boys, whereas Chilean mothers spoke more about physical states with boys than with girls.…”

Developmental changes in the frequency and complexity of mothers’ internal state utterances across the second year

“…Mothers’ internal state utterances also increased from 17 to 21 months as a proportion of all utterances, from 11% to 14%. Although, as in several previous studies, there were no differences in mothers’ frequencies of different types of internal state utterances by gender, for completeness we have retained this factor for subsequent analyses (Beeghly et al, 1986; Chang, Farkas, Vilca, & Vallotton, 2017; Lemche et al, 2007).…”

Not just quantity but also quality of language: Cross-cultural comparisons of maternal mental state talk in New Zealand, Australia, and China

“…Prominent differences in particular types of MS talk are also observed across other non-Western cultures. For instance, US mothers used a similar amount of emotion language with their children aged 10 to 15 months, but referred more to cognitions compared to Chilean mothers [15]. In other cases, there is a culture-specific difference in the type of MS talk.…”