The Development of Gender Roles: From Two-Parent Families to Single-Parent Families with One Gender Role Missing

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.