In a school sample of early adolescents, we expanded the view of gender typicality to include adolescents who varied in the extent of felt similarity to own- and other-gender peers, and examined how their felt own- and other-gender similarity, are related to depression. Further, we examined the moderating role of parental acceptance of gender atypicality. Participants were 504 ethnically/racially diverse sixth graders ( Mage = 11 years, SD = 0.56, 51.6% boys) and their parents. Path analyses showed that adolescents’ felt own-gender similarity, but not felt other-gender similarity, was negatively related to depression. Further, when parental acceptance was high, adolescent depression was low, even for adolescents who had cross-gender tendencies or low own-gender tendencies. Tendencies of atypicality were only related to risk for depression when parental acceptance was low. These findings support previous research that many variations of gender typicality exist, and highlighted the importance of parental acceptance of gender atypicality.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.