Relationship of shame and guilt to gender and parenting practices

Abstract

This study examines individual, joint and interaction effects of gender and six clusters of parenting practices on shame and guilt evoked by five clusters of scenarios: Impersonal Transgression, Harm to Another Person, Trust Violation, Social Impropriety, and Exposed Inadequacy. Women expressed significantly higher shame and guilt than men toward all scenario clusters. Women's responses were affected little by the parenting practices of either parent. Largely consistent with earlier findings, feelings of shame and guilt correlated positively with factors of Identification, Empathy Induction, Protective Interdependence, and Competency Interdependence, and correlated negatively with Physical Coercion and Psychological Coercion factors, particularly for men. Multiple regressions, however, found far fewer of these relationships significant. Identification, Physical Coercion, and Protective Interdependence parenting had almost no effect on shame or guilt for men or women, contrary to historical assumptions. The frequently reported negative relationship between corporal punishment and shame and guilt hence may be due more to the denigration of Psychological Coercion that generally accompanies corporal punishment than to corporal punishment itself.