Idealized cultural beliefs about gender: implications for mental health

Background In this paper, we examined the relationship between culture-specific ideals (chastity, masculinity, caste beliefs) and self-esteem, shame and depression using an idealized cultural model proposed by Mahalingam (2006, In: Mahalingam R (ed) Cultural psychology of immigrants. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp 1–14). Methods Participants were from communities with a history of extreme male-biased sex ratios in Tamilnadu, India (N = 785). Results We hypothesized a dual-process model of self-appraisals suggesting that achieving idealized cultural identities would increase both self-esteem and shame, with the latter leading to depression, even after controlling for key covariates. We tested this using structural equation modeling. The proposed idealized cultural identities model had an excellent fit (CFI = 0.99); the effect of idealized identities on self-esteem, shame and depression differed by gender. Conclusions Idealized beliefs about gender relate to psychological well-being in gender specific ways in extreme son preference communities. We discuss implications of these findings for future research and community-based interventions.