Study: Talking gender, ethnicity, race, and change: How mothers scaffold girls' identity meaning-making during puberty (DOI: 10.1111/jora.70226)
Some of the most meaningful changes during puberty may not happen in the body alone. They may also happen in conversation.
A new University of Michigan study suggests that as Black girls move through puberty, conversations with their mothers become an important space for making sense of changing bodies, race, gender, ethnicity and identity.
Rather than simply giving advice, mothers and daughters build these meanings together, with girls taking an increasingly active role as they mature, said Rona Carter, the study's lead author and U-M associate professor of psychology.
Published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, the qualitative study highlights several key findings:
Puberty is not only a biological transition, but also an important identity transition.
As Black girls move through puberty, conversations with mothers can become a space where girls make sense of bodily change alongside gender, race, ethnicity and social expectations.
Mothers play an important role in helping girls interpret the social and emotional meaning of puberty.
Rather than simply providing information about growing up, mothers scaffold girls' meaning-making by helping them name, interpret and organize experiences related to changing bodies, gender expectations, racialized messages and social comparison.
Girls' voices become increasingly central as puberty progresses.
In dyads where girls were earlier in puberty, mothers often took a more guiding role in shaping identity meanings. In dyads where girls were later in puberty, daughters were more likely to assert their own interpretations, suggesting that puberty may shift identity conversations toward more active negotiation.
Disagreement between mothers and daughters can be developmentally meaningful.
Moments of misalignment were not simply communication problems. They were part of how mothers and daughters negotiated, revised and repaired identity meanings together, suggesting that healthy identity development can happen through dialogue, tension and repair.
Why it matters
Adolescence is a critical period for mental health and identity development. By showing how mothers and daughters work together to make sense of puberty, race, ethnicity and gender, the findings may help inform programs and resources that support healthy family communication and adolescent well-being.
Because the study focused specifically on Black mother-daughter dyads, Carter noted that the findings should not be interpreted as direct comparisons with other racial groups or other family structures. Instead, the study points to the importance of understanding puberty as a biological, social and cultural transition, and of examining how caregivers help young people make meaning of that transition.
"In this qualitative study of mother-daughter dyads, we found that puberty can intensify identity conversations for Black girls, with mothers helping daughters make sense of gender, race, ethnicity and bodily change while girls increasingly claim authority over their own meanings as they mature," Carter said.
Study co-authors were Jessica Pitts, Joonyoung Park, Ha Bui and Julia Cross, all from the U-M Department of Psychology.
