The impact of maternal experience of gender roles on children's socio-emotional development in Uganda: a qualitative study

Cultural learning environments and gender roles play a key role in shaping children's development, particularly regarding their social and emotional skills. However, most work on this topic relies on methods that overlook lived experiences and assume high participant literacy, which may not apply to Majority World contexts. To address these issues, this study qualitatively explored maternal beliefs about gender roles and their potential influence on children's socio-emotional development in two distinct Ugandan locations. We conducted focus groups with Ugandan mothers from a rural (Budongo, N = 22) and urban (Mbarara, N = 27) setting to explore common themes in maternal experiences and attitudes towards the socialisation of their infants and children. Inductive thematic analysis revealed four themes: (1) women's role as socially contingent, (2) men should, but do not, (3) hiding negative emotions for self-protection, and (4) emotion as a somatic experience. These themes and their relation to child socio-emotional development, examined through their children's behaviour, are discussed with regard to current literature on cultural learning and maternal attitudes towards parenting.