Gendered patterns of reporting childhood abuse and quality of parental relationships across 21 nations: Descriptive findings from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS)
- 1Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
Abstract
Childhood experiences are important antecedents of adult flourishing, yet gender patterns in these experiences are under-studied in large global samples using a common survey instrument and population-based study design. From the Global Flourishing Study Wave 1 data (2022-2024), we analyzed responses from 203,430 adults (51% female, 49% male) in nationally representative samples from 21 nations on eight childhood-related items: experiencing physical or sexual abuse, feeling like an outsider in the family, feeling loved by ones mother or father, quality of relationship with ones mother or father, health growing up, and perceived family financial situation. Greater negative experiences were noted in more affluent nations (as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita), with negative experiences generally reported more often among females than males, again especially in more affluent nations. Gender differences were more pronounced when it came to relationships with mothers compared to fathers. Perceptions regarding health and family finance while growing up did not show appreciable gender differences and had weaker correlations with other items.
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BibTeX
@misc{hou2026gendered,
title = {{Gendered patterns of reporting childhood abuse and quality of parental relationships across 21 nations: Descriptive findings from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS)}},
author = {Y. Hou and H. Parikh and E. Zang and J. Higginbottom and S. Saxena and T. J. VanderWeele and B. Mukherjee},
howpublished = {medRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.12.26365301},
url = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.26365301v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gendered patterns of reporting childhood abuse and quality of parental relationships across 21 nations: Descriptive findings from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS)
AU - Y. Hou
AU - H. Parikh
AU - E. Zang
AU - J. Higginbottom
AU - S. Saxena
AU - T. J. VanderWeele
AU - B. Mukherjee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - medRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.12.26365301
UR - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.26365301v1
AB - Childhood experiences are important antecedents of adult flourishing, yet gender patterns in these experiences are under-studied in large global samples using a common survey instrument and population-based study design. From the Global Flourishing Study Wave 1 data (2022-2024), we analyzed responses from 203,430 adults (51% female, 49% male) in nationally representative samples from 21 nations on eight childhood-related items: experiencing physical or sexual abuse, feeling like an outsider in the family, feeling loved by ones mother or father, quality of relationship with ones mother or father, health growing up, and perceived family financial situation. Greater negative experiences were noted in more affluent nations (as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita), with negative experiences generally reported more often among females than males, again especially in more affluent nations. Gender differences were more pronounced when it came to relationships with mothers compared to fathers. Perceptions regarding health and family finance while growing up did not show appreciable gender differences and had weaker correlations with other items.
ER -