Mothers’ Identities and Gender Socialization of Daughters

Incorporating 125 mothers’ identities and communication with daughters, we met two aims. First, addressing potential identity-based impetuses for rigidity in gender socialization and culminating gender schema theory (Marks, Lam, & McHale, 2009) with identity-based theorizing prioritizing morality (Stets & Carter, 2006), we tested the intersection between mothers’ mothering, feminist, and generativity identities in relation to their socialization. Mothers' generativity identity yielded the most significance. The greater women's generativity, the more likely they were to encourage daughters’ stereotypically female behaviors and stereotypically male behaviors, and the less likely to discourage daughters’ displays of other-gender characteristics. Second, we explored mothers’ recalled messages about familiar identities of motherhood and feminism to illuminate mothers’ voiced beliefs, goals, and values for daughters and all women.