Sex Roles

, Volume 28, Issue 9–10, pp 583–605 | Cite as

Depression, gender, gender role traits, and the wish to be held

  • Michael P. Sanfilipo
Article

Abstract

Different forms of the wish to be held were examined with measures of femininity, masculinity, and various types of depression in a sample of normal young adults whose ethnicity resembled that of national statistics. Women reported greater wishes to be held than men. However, the wish to be held, which was uncorrelated with depressive symptomatology, related positively to femininity and feelings of efficacy for men, but positively to anaclitic and introjective depression for women. For women, gender role traits also were important for wishes to be held entailing themes of strategy and deprivation. Since gender differences regarding various depressive experiences did not account for these findings, the wish to be held may have different meanings for men and women.

Keywords

Depression Young Adult Gender Difference Social Psychology Gender Role 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Plenum Publishing Corporation 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Michael P. Sanfilipo
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Psychiatry, Room 17021W, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical CenterNew York

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