<p>Patriarchal societies differentially value men over women, as reflected through persistent gender wage gaps and the disproportionate burden of household labor upon women. Our mixed method study investigated if and how families communicate the comparative value of women and men through the analysis of retrospective essays written by emerging undergraduate adults in Northern and Southern California (<i>N</i> = 307; <i>M</i>_age = 19.27&#xa0;years, 59.6% women, 36.8% men, 3.3% of nonbinary genders; 38.4% Latiné-, 23.8% European-, 20.2% Asian-heritage, 17.6% other). Inductive thematic analysis revealed that families primarily conveyed messages through conversation, but also through household practices. The nature of conversations depended on gender composition: mother-daughter conversations referenced societal gender inequality and women’s empowerment; mother-son conversations highlighted male privilege through sharing personal experiences with gender discrimination; father-son and father-daughter conversations emphasized respect for all through a “genderblind” approach, and sometimes conveyed benevolent or hostile sexist messages, respectively. Family practices and routines included the (un)equal gender-based treatment of siblings, acceptance/rejection of gender norm violations, and parents’ modeling of gender (in)equality. These findings suggest that the family can play a role in informing the development of gender public regard, an understudied but important dimension of gender identity.</p>