Who influences the gender norms of adolescents? A comparison between parental and peers’ gender norms effect on the gender norms of adolescents

Abstract

The social environment has an influential impact on the development of gender norms, however previous research has not found to what extent the influences of parent’s and peers’ gender norms on adolescents’ gender norms differ in effect. Using CILS4EU data, the parental and peers’ gender norms effect on gender norms of adolescents between 14 and 18 are analysed with a multivariate regression while adding two moderators; time spent with parents and amount of friends. The CILS4EU data provides this study with a large sample size of 2308, and next to data on the adolescents it provides data collected directly from the parents and peers. The hypotheses in this article are derived from commonly used explanations for norm development, namely gender socialization, social learning theory and social identity theory. The results show that parental and peers’ gender norms have significant positive effects on adolescents’ gender norms, however parental influence is bigger. Furthermore, time spent with parents has a positive effect on the parental influence on adolescents. Amount of friends is not found to be a significant moderator of the effect that peers’ gender norms have.