Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Chapter 4 - The vital and stabilising role of work preferences 
105 
stable components of attitudes and preferences, by including objective parental 
socializing factors that may have influenced mother’s attitudes and preference a 
priori of her entering the labour market.  
The main research question is:  
To what extent do heterogeneous general gender values and personal gender 
and work attitudes of Dutch mothers explain their number of preferred work 
hours, and in turn, to what extent can their preferred number of work hours 
explain their labour market behaviour? 
I try to answer this question with a path analysis using data from a survey among 
a representative sample of Dutch mothers. For this study, a special questionnaire 
was completed in November 2010 by 935 mothers with at least one child below 
the age of 13 still living at home. 
The main limitation of the study is that it is based on a cross sectional survey, 
meaning that behaviour and intentions (preferences and attitudes) are measured at 
the same moment. The path model that I test is based on the assumption that 
socializing factors influence attitudes and preferences, and thus preferences have 
some origins a priori of behaviour, which might act as a stabilising factor on work 
preferences. In the study it is acknowledged that there is also an opposite causal 
effect running from behaviours towards preferences and attitudes. The factual 
causality can only be determined with longitudinal data, which is, unfortunately, 
not available.  
In the next sections I discuss three hypotheses based on a concise overview of 
the literature on the key concepts of this study: work preferences (preferred 
number of work hours), work and gender attitudes, and parental socialization.  
4.2 
Preferred number of work hours: cause or effect? 
The first part of this section addresses the question of the extent to which work 
preferences influence labour market behaviour. Labour market behaviour of 
mothers can be split into the decision to work or stay at home, and subsequently 
the number of hours that mothers work. Work preferences are here defined as the 
number of hours mothers prefer to work, and not as mothers’ occupational 
choices. The main focus is to understand the variation on women’s labour 
participation, since this variation is particularly large in the Netherlands, and not 
their diverse choices of occupation. 
The expected relationship between work preferences and labour market 
behaviour is based on the theory of planned behaviour of Ajzen (1991) and Ajzen 
and Fishbein (1973, 2005). This theory assumes that in a given situation, a person 
holds or forms a specific intention towards his behaviour, which influences his 
successive overt behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein 1973, p.42; Ajzen, 1991, p.182). 
In other words, intention is an aim that guides action to perform a single 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
106 
behaviour. At the base lies the assumption that the stronger the intention for a 
certain behaviour, the more likely it is that a person will perform that behaviour. 
The overt behaviour in this study is labour market participation and the number of 
hours that a Dutch mother actually works. There is thus a high compatibility 
between the goal of the preferred behaviour and the action itself, viz. the number 
of work hours, and therefore a high correspondence between the preference and 
the behaviour can be expected. (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, p.183).  
Many empirical psychological studies have demonstrated the predictive 
validity of behavioural intentions, for example in drugs or condom use, prisoners’ 
dilemmas, migration or in political voting (Sheeran, 2002). Sheeran (2002) 
reported in his meta-analysis of intent-behavioural studies, an overall correlation 
of .53 between intention and behaviour (also Irvine and Evans, 1995; Swanborn, 
1996, p.37). In relation to labour market behaviour empirical studies on the 
relationship between intention and action/behaviour are scarce, although there are 
some studies on intentions of migration and entrepreneurship (Carr and Sequeira 
2007; Kreuger, Reilly and Carsrud, 2000). Kreuger et al. (2000) for example 
showed in their empirical study among 97 North-American senior business 
students that intentions contribute to explaining why many entrepreneurs decide 
to start a business long before they learn about the opportunities.  
There is a long-running scientific discourse about the causality: do intentions 
cause behaviour or do they rather reflect the evaluation of current or past 
behaviour (French et al., 2005; Plotnikoff, Lubans, Trih and Craig, 2012; 
Swanborn, 1996). According to Ajzen and Fishbein (2005), there is exceeding 
evidence, based especially on longitudinal studies, that shows that intentions have 
an important causal impact on behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, p.198). 
Nonetheless, Ajzen and Fishbein acknowledge that the relationship between 
intention and behaviour is reciprocal. Performing a particular behaviour can yield 
new insights in the consequences of that behaviour, the expectations of others, 
and the issue of control. This feedback in itself is likely to influence future 
intentions and behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, p.195). Nonetheless, Azjen 
and Fishbein argue that this insight still begs the question why people behaved 
previously in that particular way (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, p.201-202). 
Moreover, why is a particular situation perceived as an insurmountable stumbling 
block by one person and may present a stepping stone to someone else (Hakim, 
2000, p.170). Put differently, why do women perceive similar situations 
differently?  
Most sociological studies of people’s preferred number of work hours focus 
on the mismatch between preferred and actual work hours, and the negative 
consequences of these mismatches such as harmful effects on people’s lives and 
under-utilisation or over-employment of the labour force (Constant and 
Otterbach, 2011, p.1; Holmes et al., 2012; Reynolds, 2003). The upshot of these 
studies is that mismatches are caused by institutional and labour market 
constraints (e.g. lack of appropriate childcare, insufficient availability of suitable 
jobs), job characteristics (e.g. rigid standard working weeks, non-supportive 

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