From Pregnancy to Toddlerhood: Does Gender Matter for the Development of Family Relationships?

From a functionalist perspective, role fulfillment is at the core of family functioning. Equifinality, a traditionally systemic principle, suggests that both parents can fulfill parental roles equally. However, social expectations about gendered roles are strong, and little is known about parents’ gender-role orientation and its influence on family development and coparenting. According to gender-schema theory, gender-role orientation may be feminine, masculine, and androgynous, irrespective of parents’ biological sex. In this study, we followed 50 heterosexual couples expecting their first child from pregnancy to the second year. Both parents’ gender-role orientation was assessed through questionnaires; family alliance was assessed with the Lausanne Trilogue Play at four measurement points. Results of growth curve analyses show that (a) higher androgynous orientation in mothers is linked to lower levels of family alliance after birth, (b) lower masculine orientation in fathers and higher feminine and androgynous orientations in mothers are linked to increases in family alliances through the first 18 months, and (c) results are the same irrespective of babies’ sex. Gender-role orientation thus plays a role in the quality of family alliance, but this role is not straightforward. Parents may still be torn between traditional gendered roles and a more contemporaneous egalitarian zeitgeist.