Cultural learning environments and gender roles play a key role in shaping children’s socio-emotional development. However, most work on this topic rely on methods that overlook lived experiences and assume high participant literacy, which may not apply to Majority World contexts. To address these issues, this study qualitatively explored maternal beliefs about childrens’ socio-emotional development and gender roles in two distinct Ugandan locations. We conducted focus groups with 30 mothers each from a rural (Budongo) and urban (Mbarara) setting in Uganda to explore common themes in maternal experiences and attitudes towards the socialisation of their infants and children. Inductive thematic analysis revealed four themes: (1)manhood as an unmet ideal; (2)women’s role as socially contingent; (3)hiding negative emotions and (4)reliance on physical attributes and experiences. These themes and their effect on child socio-emotional development are discussed with regards to current literature on cultural learning and maternal attitudes towards parenting.