Impact of mothers' life style on adolescent gender-role socialization

The perceptions and attitudes of 365 eighth-grade girls were surveyed to examine the direct and indirect impact of mothers' life style on adolescents' gender-role development. Among the hypotheses investigated were the following: (1) mothers' activity outside the home enhances her status and increases the likelihood of diminished gender-role differentiation in the family and (2) status and parental role differentiation explain a greater proportion of the variance in the gender-role socialization variables than maternal life style. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to determine which combination of life style and intervening variables would best predict gender-role responses. Collectively, the results indicated only modest relationships between maternal characteristics and girls' gender-role socialization. The appropriateness of this model for future research is discussed.Data reported here are from a study conducted while the senior author was a Charles Phelps Taft Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati.