Annotated Bibliography

Updegraff, Kimberly A., Susan M. Mchale, and Ann C. Crouter. “Gender Roles in Marriage: What do they mean for girls’ and boys’ school achievements.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 25.1 (1996): 73-88. SpringerLink. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.

This article was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 1996, and was written about a study to compare school achievements of children in traditional and equalitarian families. Traditional families meant that most of the socialization and activities are only with the mother, in an equalitarian family the mother and father participated equally in activities with the children. The study showed that in early adolescents that the families’ socialization process directly effects their child’s academic achievements, and that there are differences for boys and girls. If girls only focus on traditional feminine roles it can drastically affect their performances in math and science, were as girls who have a more masculine social roll may achieve higher scores and be more interested in math and science. This more masculine roll in young girls comes from the idea that their father was around in day to day activities to instill those masculine qualities.

Obeidallah, Dawn A., Susan M. Mchale, and Rainer K. Silbereisen. “Gender Role Socialization and Adolescents’ Reports of Depression: Why some girls and not others?.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 25.6 (1996): 775-85. SpingerLink. Web. 5 Nov. 2012.

This article was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 1996, and was written about a study to compare the depression levels of girls growing up in traditional and equalitarian families. The article was written in a scientific matter and explains the outcome of tests they conducted on 87 7^th and 8^th grade girls. They analyzed the depression symptoms of girls, and analyzed the gender role of their parents. They wanted to explore the idea that the push for young girls to act in less masculine ways and take on a more traditional feminine gender role may be linked to negative mental health experiences. “Parents’ marital roles may be an important factor in adolescents’ gender identity socialization because mothers and fathers interaction and their division of family activities provide adolescent girls a script for acceptable gendered behavior” (777) The conclusion of that studies showed that girls who have more masculine qualities have less depressive behaviors. Some ideas of why this happens is because mothers who have a more powerful roll in a relationship show the daughter how important self efficiency is, which lack of, is associated with depression symptoms.