MOTHERS' GENDER SOCIALIZATION ACROSS CULTURE

The focus of our work on gender socialization examines how mothers’ socialize gender with their children and adolescents and draws from a five-year longitudinal mixed-method study of 250 Black, Latino, Asian, and White mothers and children in the U.S. and a ten-year longitudinal mixed-method study of over 1200 mothers and children in Nanjing, China. We aim to examine: (1) how mothers both accommodate and resist mainstream messages about being a girl or a boy with their daughters and sons;  and (2) the variation in strategies of socialization by age, nationality, ethnicity, gender, and other social identities of their children.

Team Members

• Niobe Way
• Esther Sin
• Anna Bennet
• Nikole Grulla
• Sara H. Kazi
• Susan Rydz
• Katie Deangelis
• Albert Shen
• Yoojin Lee
• Daisy Song
• Katie Semple
• Stephanie Steinberg

Publications

McFadden, K. E., Way, N., & Hughes, D. L. (under review). Mothers endorsement of gender-typed values and activities and its academic correlates among adolescents. Sex Roles. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2016

Presentations

Sin, E.J., Rydz, S., Grulla, N., Bennet, A., Kazi, S.H., & Way, N. (2016, April). Mothers’ socialization of gender with adolescent daughters: A qualitative study. Poster presented at the 2016 Society for Research on Adolescence Biennial Meeting, Baltimore, MD.

PROJECT FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF OUR COMMON HUMANITY

The Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH) is an emerging think and do tank, funded by the NoVo foundation and based at New York University. It aims to create a more just and humane society by bringing together the science and practice that reveal our capacity and need for human connection. The We Are Human campaign has emerged from PACH resulting in several activist campaigns and research projects.

To learn more about our ongoing and past projects and how to get involved, visit www.pach.org.

WE ARE HUMAN CAMPAIGN: Research

Although the problems caused by implicit forms of racial bias are clear, surprising little progress has been made in reducing them. To date, most interventions have attempted to disrupt the implicit racial associations stored in memory. But few studies have shown effects that last beyond the experimental intervention session and, as a whole, these intervention effects have been unreplicable. The lack of an effective intervention represents not just a gap in the scientific literature, but an imminent concern for society. We propose a completely new approach to reducing implicit prejudices that focuses on enhancing the humanity of racial minority group members—that is, changing the perceiver’s perspective on an individual by humanizing that individual. We will do so using the unique and innovative video self- portrait approach called the “We are Human” (WAH) project, which reveals the common humanity in people from diverse racial and ethnic groups.

 The WAH video project is a compilation of video self portraits of people answering five questions that underscore our common humanity: 1) what is one of your favorite childhood memories and why; 2) what is the best things that has ever happened to you and why; 3) whom do you trust the most and why; 4) what do you fear the most in life and why; and 5) what do you most desire in life and why? Each of the questions has been found to evoke responses that reveal similarities across diverse communities (Way, 2011; Way, 2015).  In various demonstrations, these videos have also been effective in eliciting empathy and an appreciation for a common humanity.

Currently, we are designing our protocol and creating our video intervention tool. We will begin running subjects and collecting data in Fall 2016. We will be looking for NYU undergraduates to assist in data collection.

Team Members

• Niobe Way, Principal Investigator

• David Amodio, Principal Investiagtor

• Cambria Litsey

• Rameen Shafiee

• Chelsea Forgenie

• Amelia Yang

• Susan Rydz

• Albert Shen