Emerging Adults and Gender Norms: Everyday Life Experiences, Media Perceptions, Attitudes, and Future Expectations

Abstract

As media’s (e.g., television, movies, news) presence becomes increasingly prominent in individuals’ everyday lives, it is critical to consider how emerging adult men and women acquire gender norm information. Accordingly, this study explores how emerging adults’ everyday life gender norm experiences and media gender norm perceptions contribute to gender norm attitude formation and future gender norm expectations in family and career. Research has examined gender norm attitudes in relationship to everyday life, media, or future life expectations. Extending past research, this survey (n = 663) concurrently assesses the interrelationships between these constructs, employing social cognitive theory as a theoretical guide to frame hypotheses and interpret findings. Structural equation models (SEMs) illustrated emerging adults’ (M age = 20.32 years) traditional gender norm attitudes were positively correlated with traditional everyday life experiences and negatively correlated with traditional media perceptions. In each SEM, traditional gender norm attitudes positively correlated with traditional family division of labor expectations. Unexpectedly, male traditional gender norm attitudes negatively correlated with traditional career role allocation expectations. Finally, in both SEMs, only traditional everyday life experiences predicted traditional future expectations. Discussion focuses on the interplay between everyday life and media by considering the ways emerging adults may use each realm to shape gender norm attitudes and future expectations.