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Chapter 5 - The social origins of Dutch mothers’ gender values and ideal family life 
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and general gender values, with the dissimilarity between personal goals and 
public beliefs, choice and approval, what is personally desired and desirable in 
general (Hakim, 2003b, p.341; 2003c, p.70). General gender values often seem 
inconsistent with people’s own personal plans, and their answers to questions 
about their general values are prone to social desirability (Ajzen and Fishbein, 
2005, p.176; Hakim, 2003c, p.63; Marks and Houston, 2002b, p.322; Smithson 
and Stoke, 2005). Inconsistencies may be explained by the fact that what people 
think is appropriate for others may not be the best choice for themselves in view 
of their particular circumstances (Marks and Houston, 2002b, p.322). Marks and 
Houston (2002a) found, for example, in a study among 114 mothers living in 
Kent, UK, that different personal attitudes towards work and motherhood were 
significantly related to their actual labour market behaviour. But most mothers 
agreed that, in general, motherhood is more important than work (see also 
Johnston and Swanson 2006, p.517). Nonetheless, overall there is some 
correspondence between general values and personal preferences, and often 
significant relations are to be found (Ajzen, 1991; Hakim, 2003a). Ajzen (1991) 
argued that broad values have only an indirect impact on specific behaviours, by 
influencing some of the factors that are more closely linked to the behaviour in 
question, such as personal attitudes towards specific behaviours (Ajzen, 1991, 
p.181, also argued by Becker et al., 1983; Van Deth and Scarbrough, 1995). 
Subsequently, I view general values as some underlying basic elements that guide 
a mother’s ideal family life. The main goal of this study is to examine the diverse 
social origins that have contributed in shaping mothers’ heterogeneous general 
gender values and ideal family lives, based on socialization and social learning 
theory (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Bandura, 1977). 
5.5 Socialization 
theory 
Socialization theory focuses on the social relational context in which specific 
normative standards and expectations are socially transmitted. People make 
societal norms and values their own, internalizing them, by learning from others 
what is to be expected of them in the social system (Wallace and Wolf, 2006, 
p.28; also Berger and Luckmann, 1967). When full internalization has occurred, 
the presented norms and values exist, and are easily accessible within the person 
herself, so that they no longer need to be presented by the socializing agents.  
According to Bandura (1977), most modelled behaviour is learned through the 
medium of imaginable (visual imagery or mental associations with, for example, 
the person who was modelling the behaviour) and verbal coding, referred to as 
mental and verbal symbols (Bandura, 1977, p.33). If the association with specific 
symbols to behaviour is firmly built and stored in memory, observing the 
association will be strong enough to recall the ‘learned’ behaviour, which will 
happen automatically and outside of their awareness. Subsequently, one exhibits 
imitative behaviour without considering the underlying processes (Bandura, 
1977). 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
134 
Childhood is viewed as the most important formative period in life, in which 
the basic structure of the individual’s social world (base-world) is built, with 
which it will compare all later situations (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; 
Everingham et al., 2007). Socialization is only possible when the parents or 
others who take care of the new-born, have an interest - whether automatically or 
enthusiastically - in developing the child. This interest can be expressed through 
various kinds of emotional appraisals, like ‘good child’ or ‘good behaviour’ and 
‘bad child’.  These initial appraisals construct the beginning of the self: the ideas 
a person has of himself are, at first, ideas an individual gains from others about 
himself (Handel, 2006, p.15). Primary socialization is a particularly influential 
process, because a child experiences no problem of emotional identification, 
necessary for internalization, since the parents are the only significant others in 
the world of a child and the parental daily practices are taken-for-granted and feel 
‘natural’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p.154). 
Socialization theory has a somewhat distinct view from the literature on the 
subject of stratification or intergenerational social mobility. Stratification theory 
in essence points to resource transfers from parents to children. Parents transmit 
social statuses via their educational levels and occupations, and subsequent 
similarities in social structural position may generate attitudinal correspondence 
between parents and their kin (Bourdieu, 1984; Glass, Bengston and Dunham, 
1986, p.686; Liefbroer and Dijkstra, 2007). The main focus of this chapter is 
however on the transmission of values and attitudes by parental verbal and mental 
coding during childhood, which is also the main concern of socialization theory.  
Not many empirical studies have addressed the influence of parental 
socialization during childhood on adults’ later attitudes. Even so, Strauss (1969) 
already stated that intrafamilial continuity is likely to become more apparent as 
the younger generation moves into full adult status, which includes major life 
transitions such as marriage, parenthood and occupation (in Inman-Amos, 
Hendrick amd Hendrick, 1994, p.460; also Ryan, 2001). Once people become 
parents they use their childhood experiences while taking on their new role 
(Biddle et al., 1980, p.1072; Kossek and Lambert, 2005).  
Related empirical studies in Western societies have shown that children and 
adolescents of parents with ‘modern’ values appear to have more egalitarian 
perspectives on work and family roles themselves, compared to those of parents 
with more traditional values (Barret and White, 2002; Cunningham, 2001; Moen 
et al., 1997; Trent and South, 1992; Van Wel and Knijn, 2006). On the basis of a 
large cross-sectional survey of Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and 
Antillean adolescents living in The Netherlands, De Valk (2008) describes how 
various characteristics of the parents coincide with adolescents’ attitudes. 
Adolescents tend to have a more egalitarian gender attitudes if they had a 
working mother and grew up in a non-standard family arrangement (with a single 
parent or foster family) (De Valk, 2008, also Marks and Houston, 2002b, p.333). 
Weinshenker (2006) has shown, with a study among 194 middle class North 
American families, that the expectations of female adolescents (aged 12 to 18) 

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