Talking gender, ethnicity race, and change: How mothers scaffold girls' identity meaning-making during puberty

Abstract

Early adolescence is marked by intensified identity exploration, yet little research has examined how meanings of gender and ethnic-racial identity are co-constructed within family relationships during the pubertal transition. The present qualitative study investigated how mothers and daughters construct and negotiate meanings of gender, ethnic-racial identity, and their intersection through dyadic conversation, and how these processes vary by daughters' pubertal status. Participants included mother–daughter dyads of Black girls (N = 45; M_age = 9.93, SD = .97; 69% identified as Black, 31% Black biracial) who engaged in structured identity dialogue tasks. Using reflexive thematic analysis followed by dyadic synthesis, we identified interactional processes through which identity meanings were initiated, scaffolded, negotiated, and stabilized. Across dyads, puberty functioned as a contextual intensifier, heightening emotional salience and social comparison in identity talk. In the early puberty dyads, mothers more frequently guided and defined identity meanings, whereas in the advanced puberty dyads, daughters increasingly asserted interpretive authority. Mother–daughter scaffolding operated as a relational coping process, with mothers and daughters jointly shaping how embodied change and social positioning were interpreted. Moments of misalignment and repair revealed how identity meanings were negotiated rather than transmitted. Grounded in the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory, findings position identity development during puberty as a relational, phenomenological process embedded within sociocultural context. By foregrounding dyadic interaction, this study extends developmental theory and highlights family dialogue as a critical microsystem linking pubertal vulnerability to identity formation.