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Chapter 5 - The social origins of Dutch mothers’ gender values and ideal family life 
139 
should earn money, while the mother takes care of the household and the family” 
(see table 9 for a full list of the statements). The possible answers were: 1: fully 
disagree; 2: disagree; 3: neither agree nor disagree; 4: agree; 5: fully agree. A 
factor analysis showed that these variables load on one dimension. By adding the 
answers to each of the questions and rescaling, I created a variable ranging from 0 
(the most traditional general gender values) to 1 (the most egalitarian). This scale 
is highly reliable (Cronbach’s Alpha 0.781). 
Table 9. General gender values: Into what extent do you agree with the following 
propositions
 a
? 
 
N Mean 
Std. 
Deviation 
1. 
A working mother’s relationship with her children can be just 
as close and warm as that of a non-working mother 
837 3.96 
1.103 
2. 
A child that is not yet attending school is likely to suffer the 
consequences if his or her mother has a job 
837 2.49 
1.193 
3. 
Fathers ought to do more in terms of household work than they 
do at present 
837 3.40 
.857 
4. 
Fathers ought to do more in terms of childcare than they do at 
present 
837 3.45 
.843 
5. 
The father should earn money, while the mother takes care of 
the household and the family 
837 1.95 
.891 
6. 
A woman is more suited to rearing young children than a man 
837 
2.74 
1.056 
7. 
Overall, family life suffers the consequences if the mother has a 
full-time job 
837 2.90 
1.275 
Source: ‘Politics and Values’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg, November 2010.
  
a
 All items range from 1 (fully disagree) to 5 (fully agree), answers on question 1, 3 and 4 are 
reversed recoded and after computing the scale, the whole scale is reversed running from 0 
(traditional) to 1 (egalitarian): Cronbach’s Alpha 0.781 
A mother’s ideal family life  
The second dependent variable is based on a question suggested by Hakim 
(2000): ‘Which family life is closest to your ideal family life?’. This is just one of 
three questions suggested by Hakim to trace women’s lifestyle preferences. The 
two other questions concern women’s work centeredness are not included in this 
study: firstly, whether she would still work even without economic necessity, and 
secondly, what are her perceptions concerning primary earner identity (Hakim, 
2003). In the questionnaire, respondents were asked about their personal work 
centeredness: What are the main reasons that you work? A respondent could pick 
three out of eleven possible answers. Factor analysis showed, however, that these 
answers and a mother’s ideal family life could not be reduced to a single 
dimension. Therefore a mother’s personal work attitudes are not included in the 
analysis.  
The possible answers are shown in table 10. This variable is recoded into 
three categories, viz. a traditional ideal family life (answering category 1), an 
adaptive ideal family life (answering category 2) and an egalitarian ideal family 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
140 
life (answering categories 3 to 6). One in eight mothers endorses a traditional 
ideal family life, a little more than one third has an adaptive ideal family life (a 
full-time working husband and a part-time working mother) and a little more than 
half of the mothers prefer an equal division of labour with their men.  
Table 10. Which family life is closest to your ideal family life?
 
 
% agree 
1. 
A family in which my partner works full-time and I take care of the household tasks 
and child care 
12 
2. 
A family in which my partner works full-time and I work part-time and take the 
main responsibility of the household tasks and child care 
36 
3. 
A family in which both parents share equally paid labour, household tasks and child 
care 
49 
4. 
A family in which I work full-time and my partner works part-time and he (or she) 
takes the main responsibility of the household tasks and child care 
.7 
5. 
A family in which I work full-time and my partner takes care of the household tasks 
and child care. 
.2 
6. 
A single parent family in which I work and take care of the household tasks and 
child care 
2.9 
7. 
No children 
.4 
N = 930 
Source: ‘Women and their social environment’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg, 
November 2010. 
Independent variables 
Parental values  
Firstly, the respondents were asked which were the most important norms and 
values that they remembered being transmitted by their parents. They could 
choose three options from eleven items, such as “a good education is important”, 
“caring for others is important” and “you have to work to be financially 
independent of others” (see table 11 for the full list). By this way of questioning, I 
force the respondents to only choose parental norms and values that have a strong 
link in memory. Ajzen and Fishbein (2005) assumed that the strength of an 
attitude is related to the strength of the association: the stronger the attitude, the 
more automatically and frequently accessible the association is from memory.   
Since the respondents could only pick a maximum of three answers, the 
questions cannot be transformed straightforwardly into a single variable. 
Therefore, I included each attitude that was mentioned as a separate dichotomous 
variable in the analysis.  
 
 

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