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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
36 
through a specific national curriculum at school, as well as government 
advertisements (Grünell, 2001). However, despite the societal and political 
support for this parental sharing scenario, the political efforts were not able to 
break through the daily practice of families, at least not on a significant scale 
(Grünell, 2012; Kremer, 2007; Van Wel and Knijn, 2001). In line with the 
definition of Lewis and Daly (2000), childcare in the Netherlands is generally still 
seen as an unpaid, informal and emotional activity, with a strong sense of 
obligation and duty for the parents, but also seen as a ‘right’, in the positive sense 
of the word. To put it more colloquially, parents are more regarded as Snow 
White than as Cinderella (Kremer, 2007), which itself already symbolises a 
double morality. But more importantly, in practice the ‘obligation’ towards care 
applies especially for mothers, and the ‘right’ to care more for fathers. For 
example, Hooghiemstra (2000) concluded in her empirical research among Dutch 
couples that the great weight on freedom of choice for women is typically Dutch: 
women are allowed to work but it is not necessary. Nevertheless, this conviction 
is accompanied by a strong family ideology: when children are there, they should 
be her priority (Hooghiemstra, 2000, p.130). 
As a consequence, in 2012 only 28 per cent of Dutch parents made use of 
professional day-care centres as their main childcare provision (including host 
families) (Merens et al., 2012), and the magical norm of a maximum of three days 
per week is hardly ever exceeded (Kremer, 2007).  Higher-educated parents in 
particular make use of professional care, while lower-educated parents tend to 
find solutions for childcare within their own family spheres, such as grandparents 
and siblings (Merens et al., 2012).  
Other examples of Dutch double moral and gender standards include the 
following illustrations. The ideology of parental-sharing is endorsed by 50 per 
cent of parents, while 30 per cent prefer the one-and-a-half breadwinner model, 
and only 8 per cent support the breadwinner model (Merens et al., 2011). In 
practice, in 2010, 18 per cent of Dutch couples both worked similar hours, 43 per 
cent lived the one-and-a-half-breadwinner scenario, and 24 per cent followed the 
traditional breadwinner model; a further 15 per cent pursued different atypical 
models of parental sharing (Merens et al., 2011). Among Dutch people, 63 per 
cent considered working two days or fewer to be ideal for mothers with children 
younger than four years old, and only 10 per cent endorsed the ideal of these 
young mothers working 4 to 5 days per week (Merens et al., 2011, p.130). For 
fathers with young children, almost all Dutch people consider working 4 or 5 
days to be ideal. And although, in international comparative studies, Dutch men 
came out fairly well in terms of their contribution to domestic tasks and working 
part-time (Wiesmann  et al., 2010, p.342, and table 1, p.26), their contributions to 
the running of the household and upbringing of children have shown little 
progress since 1995 (Bucx, 2011, p.118). In 2005, mothers spent more than 24 
hours a week on household tasks, and fathers just 9.4 hours (Bucx, 2011, p.112). 
This inequality in the division of household tasks remains rather unquestioned. 

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Chapter 1 - Socio-structural developments in the Netherlands 1945-2012 
37 
The majority (55 per cent) of Dutch parents never (or at least less than once a 
year) discuss their division of unpaid tasks (Merens et al., 2011, p.142).  
To summarise, institutional care arrangements, such as parental leave systems, 
the schedule of Dutch primary schools and the quality, costs and availability of 
childcare, together with further binding moral standards outlined above, fail to 
facilitate full-time work for mothers (Kremer, 2007; Plantenga, 2002), which 
remains a strenuous option for Dutch women. However, social and institutional 
limitations in relation to women’s full-time work (as well as to full-time 
mothering) remain relatively unquestioned in the public and political domains. 
The conflict between the genders in the ‘70s and ‘80s, despite being a debate that 
only really took place between higher-educated couples (Brinkgreve, 1988; 
Komter, 1990b), seems to have been more or less resolved by the modified 
breadwinner model. Women, including mothers in particular, are now greater 
enabled (as they both wish and are expected to be) to take up paid employment. 
And yet while working part-time, they are also still required to take charge of the 
bulk of the unpaid care work, just as their own mothers provided back in their 
own day (Haas, 2005, p.496). Nowadays, no strong structural or cultural 
pressures, nor contradictory messages or alternative lifestyles have been 
presented to change this newly established status quo (Van Doorne-Huiskes and 
Schippers, 2010).  
1.5 Conclusion 
The above concise overview of Dutch structural and cultural features sheds light 
on why Dutch mothers are predominantly in part-time work.  In summary, in 
examining the Dutch part-time perspective in cultural and structural terms, the 
impression arises that the Netherlands is (still) characterised by a double gender 
standard for mothers (Komter, 1990b).  
Since the 1990s, mothers and fathers have been able to combine (part-time) 
work and motherhood in a relatively sophisticated way, especially when 
compared to mothers in other affluent societies. On the surface, the Netherlands 
appears to be a society that embraces equal gender roles, particularly since a 
comparatively higher proportion of men engage in part-time labour contracts 
(OECD Statistics, 2013). Nevertheless, the Netherlands lags behind in terms of its 
(erratic) social policies towards childcare and parental leave systems (Plantenga, 
2008), as well as its primary school timetables which are seen as impractical for 
working schedules. Combined with relatively traditional moral expectations 
towards mothering and fathering, all these issues affect the engendered daily 
practices of Dutch parents (Wiesmann et al., 2010). In addition, the special 
privilege of the availability of relatively ‘sophisticated’ part-time work (Tijdens, 
2006) seems only to withhold Dutch mothers from complaining (Van Doorne-
Huiskes and Schippers, 2010; Wiesmann et al., 2010), since it is generally 
assumed that part-time work enhances the work-life balance when compared to 
full-time work and full-time mothering. And yet the negative consequences of 

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