TITLE:
The Development of Gender Roles: From Two-Parent Families to Single-Parent Families with One Gender Role Missing
AUTHORS:
I-Jun Chen, Panlin Tang, Ponam Saba
KEYWORDS:
Family Structure, Gender Roles, Single-Parent Family, Social Development, Children
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.6,
June
29,
2023
ABSTRACT: As the
number of single-parent families is increasing, the issue of structural changes
in single-parent families is gaining more attention. The impact of
single-parent families on children’s gender role development due to the absence
of one parent is worth exploring. Gender roles are shaped by the interaction of
innate and acquired factors. Innate factors such as sex hormones and genome lay
the basis for gender socialization. In contrast, acquired factors are dominated
by the family environment (e.g., parent-child
interactions, sibling relationships, family structure, etc.) and permeated by
the social environment (e.g., regional culture, media culture, etc.), which
together influence gender role development. To explore the in-depth role of
family factors in gender role development, especially the impact of changes in
family structure, this study explored five databases (four English and one
Chinese) and identified 1573 studies; 112
studies were included in a systematic analysis. To summarize relevant
studies, there are two main arguments for the “effect theory” and “no effect
theory” on family structure changes and children’s gender role development.
Moreover, the results that support the effect theory account for more. Studies
holding significant effects indicated a higher prevalence of masculine traits
and undifferentiated types in children of single-parent families and found that
the gender configuration of single-parent family members influences children’s
gender role development. However, a few studies have also concluded that
changes in family structure have little effect on children’s gender roles. For
this reason, the article proposes three reasons for the discrepancy and
highlights future research breakthroughs.