ABSTRACT

Extant research on parents’ understanding of gratitude and the socialization of gratitude in children has primarily been conducted in Western cultural contexts. To address this gap, this interview-based qualitative study explored the perspectives of 50 Chinese parents (25 mothers and 25 fathers) regarding their understanding of gratitude, their socialization strategies for gratitude, and potential gender-differentiated approaches to teaching gratitude. Our findings revealed that the Chinese parents in this study perceived gratitude as encompassing various components, including feeling grateful for the motherland and the predecessors, giving back to the society, feeling grateful toward benefactors with a desire to reciprocate the benefactors, and expressing gratitude toward parents and family members. Regarding gratitude socialization strategies, the results indicated that the Chinese parents typically employed training and role modeling to cultivate their children's gratitude. As compared to the Chinese fathers, the mothers took the primary responsibility for gratitude socialization. Notably, mothers were consistent in their socialization practices regardless of whether they had a son or daughter. In contrast, fathers tended to differentiate their approach based on the child's gender: fathers of sons were more actively involved in gratitude-related discussions, emphasizing conversations about gratitude more frequently with their sons than fathers with daughters did. These findings provide empirical evidence supporting tenets of our theoretical frameworks and offer critical insights for designing intervention programs aimed at promoting children's gratitude development, particularly in Chinese cultural contexts.

ABSTRACT

During adolescence, individuals make key decisions about coursework, and career paths, including paths toward careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This study identified groups of adolescents who vary in STEM career interests, feelings of support, and perceptions of barriers in STEM and explored what factors predict group membership. Using a latent class analysis with a sample of 473 9th and 10th grade students from public schools in the Southeastern United States (M _age = 15.14, 48.4% White and 43.6% female), 4 distinct classes of adolescents were identified: low STEM, supported with barriers (38.2%), high STEM with barriers (26%), high STEM without barriers (21.6%), and low STEM with high barriers (14.2%). The likelihood of membership in the high STEM without barriers class was higher for participants who reported greater STEM class belonging, growth mindset, and engagement. Efforts to promote continued STEM trajectories may focus on belonging, mindsets, and fostering STEM engagement.

ABSTRACT

Navigating challenging peer experiences is typical during early adolescence, and youths’ social cognitions—social appraisals and social self-efficacy—about such challenges have implications for their subsequent peer interactions. Parents can play a role in shaping youth social cognitive skills by socializing youth on how to think about challenging peer situations (i.e., cognitive restructuring advice), and the extent to which youth seek parental advice could affect the parent socialization–youth outcome link. Thus, this study aimed to examine parents’ cognitive restructuring advice in response to peer challenges (thinking about the situation in non-threatening ways) and the association with youths’ social appraisals and self-efficacy about 1 year later. Youth support seeking was tested as a moderator of this association. Aims were tested with a community sample of predominantly rural low-income African American (AA) families, which included 90 AA adolescents and their parents at T1; 87 families returned at T2. We found that parents’ cognitive restructuring suggestions ranged from none or vague cognitive restructuring advice to elaborated cognitive restructuring advice; on average, parents reported vague advice. Results from hierarchical regression analyses revealed that main effects of T1 parents’ cognitive restructuring advice and T1 youth-reported support seeking did not emerge for either T2 youth-reported social appraisals or self-efficacy. However, youth support seeking emerged as a moderator, such that more elaborated parental cognitive restructuring advice was linked with youths’ more positive social appraisals, whereas vague to no cognitive restructuring advice was associated with less positive social appraisals but only among youth who reported higher support seeking.

ABSTRACT

Children begin to reason about gender and others' gender-typed preferences from early in life, yet not enough is known about whether their reasoning reflects only binary categorization or a more nuanced way understanding of variation in gender. Further, little is known about how children's conception of their own gender affects how they think about others. In the current study, 3–6-year-old preschool children (n = 56) were asked to predict preferred and nonpreferred toys that included feminine, neutral, and masculine options for other children who were described using their binary gender identity (i.e., a gender-typical hairstyle, name, pronouns) and their home environment (i.e., room decoration and toys which were provided by their parents and were either feminine, neutral, or masculine). Children also participated in tasks to assess their own gender-typed toy preferences and their own gender identity using two continuous scales for identification with girls and with boys and their gender-typed behavior was rated by their preschool teachers. Results indicated that children considered both binary gender and information about the home environment when predicting others' toy preferences. Further, children's greater reliance on an individual's binary gender identity when allocating toys was related to the rigidity of their own gender identity and their own gender-typed toy preferences. Together, these findings add nuance to our understanding of children's developing reasoning about gender identity and preferences and reinforce that children can conceptualize gender as more than a binary category.

ABSTRACT

Effective emotion regulation is critical for establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and it has previously been linked to several indicators of social competence. Theories agree that one core characteristic of adaptive emotion regulation is the ability to flexibly adapt emotion regulation strategies to situational demands (i.e., strategy flexibility). However, little is known about the development of this ability and its association with social competence at preschool age. We hypothesized a positive association of preschoolers’ strategy flexibility with age, with overall regulation effectiveness as well as with different indicators of their social competence. To test these assumptions, we examined the emotion regulation strategies (i.e., distraction, gaze aversion, reappraisal, self-instruction, and self-soothing) of 60 preschoolers (M = 59.67 months; SD = 8.18; 45% girls) in two standardized situations, namely a frustration-eliciting persistence task and a challenging waiting situation, in which attentional deployment strategies have opposing effects, requiring flexible strategy use across situations. Children's social competencies in interaction with caregivers, peers, and task demands were assessed through teacher reports. Results reveal that the effectiveness of attentional deployment strategies changed as predicted. Furthermore, preschoolers’ ability to adapt their emotion regulation strategies to the corresponding task demands was positively associated with age and overall regulation effectiveness. Concerning teacher-reported facets of children's social competence, strategy flexibility was significantly associated with children's integration into their peer group.

Social Development, Volume 34, Issue 2, May 2025.

Social Development, Volume 34, Issue 1, February 2025.

ABSTRACT

Women score higher than men on measures of social cognition such as empathy and reading non-verbal cues. How early does this gender difference emerge? Systematic review and meta-analyses were used to assess gender difference in social perception within 1 month of birth. A total of 31 studies (40 experiments) reported on gender effects in 1936 neonates (50% girls) between 1968 and 2021. No significant difference (Hedges’ g = 0.076, p = 0.321) was found across 20 experiments measuring visual fixation on human faces. Nine experiments on neonatal imitative crying also revealed no gender difference (g = 0.157, p = 0.118). Seven studies using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale found no gender difference in total orientation (g = 0.161, p = 0.154), but girls oriented more to both animate (g = 0.279, p = 0.011) and inanimate (g = 0.242, p = 0.003) stimuli in the studies that analyzed these separately. Existing evidence supports a possible maturational difference but not a specific social advantage for girls at birth. While more research and better reporting are needed, the present findings challenge the claim that girls are innately more socially perceptive than boys.

ABSTRACT

While educational preferences can be influenced by friends through various mechanisms, the specific pathways of this influence remain underexplored. This study employs random-coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models to examine a longitudinal sample of Hungarian students (N _students = 493, N _classes = 21) observed from fifth to seventh grade. The study investigates how friends' preferences and friends' parental resources influence educational preferences while accounting for friends' academic achievement and friendship selection. The analysis identifies distinct pathways through which friends can influence educational preferences. The study suggests that adolescents do not adjust their secondary school track preferences to conform to their friends' preferences but are instead affected by the indirect influence of their friends' parental background. Students who befriend adolescents with highly educated parents are more likely to adjust their preferences toward the academically oriented secondary school track.