Maternal Gatekeeping: Antecedents and Consequences
Open accessAbstract
This study examined maternal gatekeeping, its background and psychological antecedents, and its consequences for paternal and maternal involvement in child care. In sum, 209 couples with 6- to 36-month-old children completed extensive questionnaires. Analyses revealed that various dimensions of gatekeeping were differentially associated with the psychological antecedents and consequences of maternal gatekeeping. The standards and responsibilities dimension of gatekeeping was related to the mother's self-esteem, and it predicted the father's involvement in child care. The maternal identity confirmation dimension of gatekeeping was related to the salience of the mother's maternal identity, and it predicted her own involvement in child care. The importance of examining sociopsychological characteristics that account for gatekeeping tendencies is discussed, and the need is stressed to further explore the implications of these tendencies for various forms of involvement in child care.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Mothers may be (unconsciously) reluctant to delegate caregiving responsibilities to their partners (maternal gatekeeping).
“Fourth, mothers may be (unconsciously) reluctant to delegate caregiving responsibilities to their partners (maternal gatekeeping; Gaunt, 2008).”
From Birth of a Father: Fathering in the First 1,000 Days (2019) · cites this paper as Gaunt, 2008
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 44 · Cited by 203
- Authors
- Gaunt, R.
- Affiliations
- Bar-Ilan University (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Gaunt, Ruth
- ORCID
- Gaunt, Ruth
- Venue
- Journal of Family Issues
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2007-11-19
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 373-395
- ISSN
- 0192-513X (ISSN-L)
- 1552-5481
- OpenAlex
- W2163341289
- Cited by
- 203
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 10.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Locations
- Journal of Family Issues (publishedVersion)
- Lincoln Repository (University of Lincoln) (acceptedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Work-Family Balance Challenges
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Keywords
- maternal gatekeeping, father involvement, maternal involvement, child care, maternal self-esteem, maternal identity, couples, early childhood, psychological antecedents
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
