Date of Completion

2023

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Psychological Sciences

Thesis Type

Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors

First Advisor

Jamie Abaied, Ph.D

Keywords

socialization of coping, gender, interpersonal stress, mean-level gender differences, gender moderation effects

Abstract

The way a parent socializes their child to cope with stress is an important factor that influences how their child adjusts to stress later in life. However, how a parent’s coping suggestions may differ depending on their child’s gender is not well understood. This project examined (a) how parent coping suggestions differed depending on the gender of their child, and (b) if gender moderated the association between parent coping suggestions and their child’s internalizing and externalizing problems. I drew from two studies, one in middle childhood and one in emerging adulthood, which both contained measures of parent coping suggestions and youth adjustment. Results indicated that in the emerging adulthood study, parents were significantly more likely to offer secondary control and disengagement coping suggestions to daughters compared to sons, whereas in the middle childhood study, secondary control engagement coping suggestions were associated with less internalizing problems in boys but not girls. Thus, my results suggest that both gender differences and gender moderation of socialization of coping may occur, but in different age groups.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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