Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
68 
Relatively few empirical studies in Western societies have shown how adults’ 
attitudes are influenced by processes of parental gender socialization, a few cases 
of which I will exemplify below. Children of parents with ‘modern’ values appear 
to have a more egalitarian perspective on work and family roles compared to 
children 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) described, how various characteristics of the parents coincided with 
adolescents’ attitudes. Having religious parents correlates with more traditional 
preferences among girls and boys. Adolescents tend to have a more egalitarian 
gender attitude in cases where they had a working mother and grew up in a non-
standard family arrangement (single parent or foster families) (De Valk 2008, 
also Marks and Houston 2002b, p.333). Weinshenker (2006) showed, with a 
study among 194 middle class North American families, that the expectations of 
female adolescents’ (aged 12 to 18) about their future employment as a mother 
were associated with their own mothers’ employment histories and their support 
for gender egalitarianism.
 In addition, several studies have demonstrated that 
having a working mother has a significant and stimulating effect on the 
employment behaviour of their daughters (Cloïn, 2010; Sanders, 1997; Van 
Putten et al., 2008). 
The opposite holds true as well. Gove and Herb (1974) argue that pressure on 
girls to assume feminine gender roles limits their aspirations, behaviour and 
conceptions of the selves to those matching with their future role of wives and 
mothers (in Barret and White, 2002, p.453). De Valk (2008), too, finds that 
having religious parents is related to more traditional preferences of girls and 
boys. “The greater religiousness of adult women is consistent with their 
socialization and internalization of the ‘proper’ female role” (Thompson, 1991, 
p.382). However, it is important to realise that not every religion might have the 
same effect (Hayes, McAllistar and Studlar, 2000).  
Based on socialization and social learning theory, as well as on relevant 
empirical findings, I hypothesise that the influence of parental upbringing during 
childhood (including parental behaviour as well as the transmission of values and 
attitudes), continues to influence Dutch mothers’ current gender values and 
gender and work attitudes. Therefore, the third hypothesis of this study is: 
Hypothesis 3:  
A mother’s gender values and gender and work attitudes are influenced by 
parental socialization during childhood. 
The focus of this study is to investigate the possible patterns within primary 
socialization among contemporary Dutch mothers that correspond with their 
diverse labour market behaviour, and subsequently the character – translated in 

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Chapter 2 - Theoretical framework and hypotheses 
69 
different mental and verbal codes – of these early socialization marks. Phrased 
differently, which distinguishing remnants within early childhood socialization 
still have impact on the current values and attitudes of Dutch mothers, and can 
explain their heterogeneous labour market behaviour?   
2.9 Secondary 
socialization 
As a person lives, they must learn to function in any new group or organisation 
(sub-world) that they enter. The individual learns not only new practices, but also 
new values and norms, new vocabulary, and new ways of interacting with others. 
Secondary socialization is often referred to as the acquisition of role-specific 
knowledge, or the internalization of institutional or institution-based sub-worlds. 
These sub-worlds are also more or less consistent realities with normative, 
affective and cognitive elements, and have their own rituals or material symbols 
(Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p.158). When the person is making a major 
commitment, such as entering a new relationship, a new religion or occupation, 
they are also making a significant change in life that can be described as 
developing a new self. Yet, the formal processes of secondary socialization 
persist with an essential problem: it is always determined by an earlier process of 
primary socialization. It must deal with an already formed self and an already 
internalized world (Handel, 2006; Wallace and Wolf, 2006, p.290). “This 
presents a problem because the already internalized reality has a tendency to 
persist” (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p.160). Whatever the new contents are, to 
be internalized they must somehow be superimposed upon an already present 
reality. There are two specific topics that distinguish secondary socialization from 
primary socialization, which can be termed as emotional identification and the 
problem of consistency.    
No need for emotional identification 
While primary socialization cannot take place without an emotionally charged 
identification of the child with his significant others, most secondary socialization 
can occur with a minimum of identification that is necessary for any 
communication between human beings. Put differently, the individual may 
internalize different realities without identifying with them. Moreover the reality 
of the sub-worlds can be ‘used’ for specific purposes, insofar as it is needed to 
perform certain roles. The individual keeps a subjective distance from the sub-
worlds, and is able to put them on deliberately and purposely, and to allow 
figurations that are rational and emotionally controlled (Berger and Luckmann, 
1967, p.163). Or as Berger and Luckmann (1967) put it, “the child lives willy-
nilly in the world as defined by it parents, but he can decide at any moment to 
leave an unpleasant world of his secondary socialization agents” (p.162). This 
artificial aspect of secondary socialization makes the internalization of discrepant 
worlds in secondary socialization an entirely different arrangement. Secondary 

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