Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Chapter 4 - The vital and stabilising role of work preferences 
125 
6. 
Source: Merged data from questionnaires: 
‘Politics and Values’, ‘Work and Schooling’, 
‘
Women and their social environment’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg, November 
2010. 
 
As noted above, an advantage of a path analysis is that it enables us to estimate 
both the direct and the indirect impact of several independent variables, resulting 
in the total standardized effects (table 8). These results indicate that the influence 
of a working mother in childhood affects not only her daughter’s work 
preference, but also her daughter’s gender and work attitudes, which increases the 
total effect of a working mother on work preferences substantially (beta .325). 
The impact on her daughter’s labour market activity of a working mother seems 
therefore more significant than previous Dutch research has shown (Cloïn, 2010; 
Lut, Van Galen and Latten, 2010; Sanders, 1997; Van Putten et al., 2008), since 
this impact runs directly through her work preferences as well as indirectly 
through a mother’s current values and attitudes. 
Table 8. Standardized total effects of dependent variables , work, work hours, 
preferred work hours, gender values, ideal family life, and the work attitudes: ‘I 
work in order to be economically independent’ and ‘I like to work’. 
 Work 
Hours 
worked 
Work 
preference 
Ideal 
family 
life 
General 
gender 
values 
Economic 
Independence 
I like to 
work 
1.  Education .154 
.321 
.229 
.294 
.360     
2.  Number of 
children 
-.071 -.079  -.105 
 
 
 
 
3.  Partner present 
-.064 
-.075 
-.095 
-.379 
 
-.275 
.263 
4.  Income partner 
.000 
-.556 
 
 
 
 
 
5.  No income 
.000 
-.701 
 
 
 
 
 
6.  Age 1.64
7 
.961 2.448 
1.296 
1.296 
 
1.283 
7.  Age squared 
-
1.74
2 
-1.033 -2.589 -1.417 -1.304 
 
-1.329 
8.  Religiousness -.035 
-.094 -.052 -.100 -.159  -.068 
 
9.  Work preference 
.673 
.790 
 
 
 
 
 
10.  Ideal family life 
.158 
.186 
.231 
 
 
 
 
11.  Gender values 
.088 
.103 
.130 
 
 
 
 
12.  I like to work 
.068 
.079 
.101 
 
 
 
 
13.  Economic 
independence 
.078 .092  .117 
 
 
 
 
14.  Mother paid work 
.219 
.257 
.325 
.162 .109 
.162 
 
Source: Merged data from questionnaires: ‘Politics and Values’, ‘Work and Schooling’, ‘Women and their 
social environment’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg, November 2010. 
4.7 
Conclusion and discussion 
This chapter has examined the extent to which differences in gender values and 
gender and work attitudes of Dutch mothers explain the variations in their 
preferred number of work hours, and, consequently, their diverse labour market 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
126 
behaviour. In contrast to previous research, the concept of preferred work hours is 
distinguished from (general and personal) attitudes, both theoretically and 
empirically. Theoretically, the study assumes that work preference, measured as 
the preferred number of work hours, reflects the interplay of what mothers like, 
what they conceive as possible, and what they perceive others expect them to do. 
By conducting a path analysis, the link between attitudes, preferences and actual 
labour market behaviour could be established, while controlling for the influence 
of background characteristics.  
The results show that the preferred number of work hours is the only factor 
that exerts a direct significant effect on the participation decision. Contrary to 
most other theoretical and empirical studies, the background characteristics of the 
mothers do not have any direct effect on their participation decisions (although 
indirectly they do play some role). This might be explained by the fact that most 
other studies of labour market behaviour have no control for the influence of 
preferred work hours.  
Regarding the number of hours a mother works, the preferred number of work 
hours has by far the strongest correlation with the number of hours a mother 
actually works. The analysis also gives support to the influence of a number of 
background characteristics that play an important role in microeconomic theories 
of labour market behaviour. Educational level has a positive effect on the actual 
number of work hours, and the income of the partner a negative effect, just as 
microeconomic theory predicts. Age has a curvilinear effect: up until the age of 
44, work hours decline, and after that age they increase again. In addition, 
religiousness tends to reduce the number of work hours.  
The hypothesis that the preferred number of work hours primarily corresponds 
with general values and personal attitudes is also supported by the empirical 
analysis. Moreover, if attitudinal (especially personal) factors are included in the 
analysis, they prevail over demographic and situational factors. If a mother’s 
ideal is to be a full-time homemaker, her preferred number of work hours is 
considerably smaller than if her ideal is an equal division of paid and unpaid work 
between both partners. More egalitarian general gender values also boost the 
preferred number of work hours, although the effect is smaller than that of her 
ideal family life.  
As expected, a mother’s personal work attitude relates to her work preference. 
But only two specific work attitudes have an additional positive effect on a 
mother’s work preference, namely “I like to work” and “I work in order to be 
economically independent of others”. This might be a consequence of the fact 
that in the questionnaire mothers could only choose to answer in three categories, 
which had the advantage of forcing them to choose their most relevant attitudes. 
It is preferable to utilise this method of questioning rather than scoring all 
possible attitudes with a Likert-scale, such as is the questioning method in most 
social surveys, so as to avoid the risk of social desirability. Hakim claims that this 
type of public opinion surveys often reveal apparently contradictory general 

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