Parental autonomy granting during adolescence: exploring gender differences in context.
This study investigated the ways in which 2 indicators of parental autonomy granting, adolescents' decision-making input and parental knowledge of adolescents' daily experiences, differed as a function of contextual factors (i.e., parents' gender role attitudes or sibling dyad sex composition) and boys' and girls' personal qualities (i.e., gender, pubertal status, developmental status, or birth order) in a sample of 194 families with firstborn (M = 15.0 years) and second-born (M = 12.5 years) adolescents. Firstborns were granted more autonomy than second borns, especially in families with firstborn girls and second-born boys. Girls in families marked by traditional maternal gender role attitudes were granted fewer autonomy opportunities. Postmenarcheal second-born girls were granted more opportunities for autonomy than were premenarcheal second-born girls, but only in families with less traditional maternal gender role attitudes.
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, USA. mbumpus@csuchico.edu
M F
MF
Bumpus
A C
AC
Crouter
S M
SM
McHale
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001722:Birth Order; D002648:Child; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D005610:Freedom; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008572:Menarche; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012737:Sex Factors