THE FAMILY CONTEXT OF GENDER INTENSIFICATION IN EARLY ADOLESCENCE

This longitudinal study of 144 young adolescents (ages 9-11 at phase 1 ) examined the hypothesis that boys and girls would experience increas ed ''gender-differential socialization'' across a 1-year period in ear ly adolescence, and that such patterns would be stronger in families i n which (a) parents maintained a traditional division of labor, and (b ) there was a younger sibling of the opposite gender. Longitudinal ana lyses of 3 aspects of family socialization (adolescents' participation in ''feminine'' and ''masculine'' household chores; adolescents' invo lvement in dyadic activities with mothers and fathers; parental monito ring) revealed that gender intensification was apparent for some aspec ts of family socialization but not others. In addition, when gender in tensification was apparent, it generally emerged in some family contex ts but not in others. Only dyadic parent-adolescent involvement was ch aracterized by an overall pattern of gender intensification in which g irls became increasingly involved with their mothers and boys with the ir fathers; this pattern was exacerbated in contexts where adolescents had a younger, opposite-sex sibling.