Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers  
98 
Gender attitude 
The mothers who work and prefer to work full-time have the most egalitarian 
gender attitudes, with corresponding divisions of tasks at home with their 
spouses, if a partner is present. The mothers often emphasise that they would 
never be able to work that many hours without their partner. In some cases, their 
husbands perform the majority of the unpaid tasks. However, just like the other 
groups, full-time working mothers accept differences between men and women 
and rearing practices along recognisable gender lines.  
“Women interact differently with children to men. I do think that women care 
slightly better. I mean really taking care of them, making sure they get enough 
vitamins, have had their bath and things like that. Asking, how school was 
[…] I can see that my husband can challenge them more, at times when I’d  
say, ‘don’t do that’“ (Annelies). 
And they all pull the strings in the household organisation: “I have more 
responsibility for the organisation of the household. It would be nice if he would 
take on more responsibility. But it is just more man-like to take it easy in the 
household” (Marlieke). 
And they also pursue some gender-compensating strategies, like Sheila and 
Alisha who have divided the tasks almost equally with their partners. However, 
on Sundays Alisha is in the kitchen for hours to cook all the meals for the week. 
And Sheila does exactly the same, and also describes how in the beginning, when 
her partner stayed at home with their young children, she had prearranged 
everything for him: “I planned ahead, cooked dinner and put everything in order 
[…] I called him in the afternoon, however I do trust him now.” She still cooks 
before she leaves home, and he just needs to warm the food up. 
Early adult attitude towards motherhood 
Attitudes of full-time working mothers towards mothering are similar to those of 
balancing mothers. Their early adult attitudes towards motherhood were 
ambivalent. Before their thirties, motherhood was not self-evident for them.  
“Kurt really wanted to be a father. My desire for a child was not as strong as 
Kurt’s” (Claire).  
These mothers generally have fewer children than the mothers without jobs or 
with small jobs, and gave birth to their children at a comparatively older age. 
Their overall narrative is that they find work easier than motherhood. Some 
mothers had children at a young age – occasionally by accident, sometimes 
planned – but motherhood was more of a burden than they had expected. They 
find work easier.  

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Chapter 3 - A qualitative typology of Dutch mothers’ employment narratives 
99 
As mentioned, mothers in this group appear somewhat less sensitive to the 
Dutch norm of self-care and of not taking their children to professional day-care 
too often, or not having an au pair.  
“It needs to be organised: professional day care is the best thing that has 
happened to me” (Alisha).  
However, ambitious mothers generally also consider three days enough. They 
are reluctant to admit they make use of an au pair. And although they do give up 
shared time with their children in favour of work, they sacrifice their own leisure, 
social and hobby time, to spend as much time as possible with their children. This 
finding corresponds with the conclusion drawn by Garcia-Mainar et al. (2011) 
who demonstrates that more hours spent on paid work is associated with more 
hours spent on childcare by the mother herself (the opposite relationship is found 
with fathers). 
3.7 Conclusions 
and 
discussion 
The present study aims to shed light on how behaviour is explained by mothers in 
their narratives of choice, work preference and their attitudes towards work, 
gender and motherhood, in order to understand the diverse employment pattern of 
Dutch mothers. For this purpose, 39 mothers living in Amsterdam, the 
Netherlands, with diverse employment behaviours, were interviewed. They were 
grouped as: stay-at-home mothers, mothers with small part-time jobs (12-24 
hours), mothers with large part-time jobs (25-25 hours) and full-time working 
mothers. The analysis revealed that the alternative courses of employment action 
among the interviewees coincides with different mixes of choice, constraints, 
preferences and attitudes, which form the basis of a typology, as is displayed in 
table 2.  
Table 2. Typology of mothers based on their employment narratives. 
Work hours 
0 
Drifters 
12-24 
Privilegeds 
25-35 
Balancers 
35> 
Ambitious 
Narrative of choice ‘Self agency’ 
_ 
++ 
+ 
++ 
Preferred work hours 
16-24 hours 
16-24 hours 
25-35 hours 
35> hours 
Work attitude 
+ 
+ 
++ 
++ 
Economic independence 
_ 
_ 
++ 
++ 
Gender attitude 
Traditional/ 
adaptive 
Rather  
traditional 
Adaptive/ 
Egalitarian 
Egalitarian 
Satisfaction gender division of 
labour 
+/- ++  +/- + 
Motherhood ++ 
++ 
+/- 
+/- 
  -=absent, +/-=ambivalent or variable, +=positive, ++= very positive 
The typology of mothers in table 2 shows how mothers differ in their rationalities 
of choice, which are much more concerned with weighing the financial costs and 
benefits, while explaining their work aspirations and choosing their career paths. 

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