Gender typicality through generations: A study within a group of Italian families

Introduction: Gender typicality refers to an individual's perception of similarity to same-gender groups based on shared interests, behaviors, attitudes, and roles. Recently, the Dual Identity approach (Martin et al., 2017) assesses gender typicality (or similarity) considering two different levels of similarity: feeling similar to one's own gender and feelings similar to other gender. Different studies analyzed gender typicality through the life course, but there is a paucity of studies that analyzed gender typicality within the family context. Methods: Participants were 48 Italian families with a child between the ages of 8 and 13 (Mage = 10,51; 40% girls). All families are composed of two heterosexual parents who live together with the child. Participants reported their self-perception of typicality and their perception of typicalities of all the family members (i.e., mother, father, children) through a self-reported questionnaire. Results: Regarding own gender typicality perception, results show that both fathers and mothers considered boys more typical to their own gender than boys' self-evaluation of their gender typicality. Conversely, regarding the perception of other gender typicality, both mothers and fathers consider boys less typical of the other gender, compared to boys' self-perception of the other gender typicality No significant results both on own and other gender typicality are found for girls. Conclusions: These findings suggest that parents' perception of boys' typicality does not align with boys' perception. Moreover, results underline that parents tend to have a more masculine idea of boys, reproducing a more stereotypical view of their gender role, which could have important implications for boys' gender development. Implications: The present study could have important clinical and social implications regarding gender education and gender development within the family context.