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Chapter 5 - The social origins of Dutch mothers’ gender values and ideal family life 
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ideal family life.  The analyses show that primary and secondary socialization 
processes do indeed matter.  
Firstly, as expected (hypothesis 1), a mother’s ideal family life is significantly 
related to her general gender values. Adding control variables, a higher education 
corresponds with more egalitarian ideals and the presence of a partner with more 
traditional standards. Secondly, the findings shed some light on which 
remembered parental verbal and mental symbols are significantly associated with 
a mother’s current gender values and personal ideals (hypothesis 2). The 
instrumental parental message that “work is just a means to earning money” 
renders more traditional general gender values. For such mothers, parental 
socialization regarding an intrinsic motivation to work was apparently absent. In 
line with stratification theory, when a respondent’s mother had a relatively high 
educational level, the respondent’s general gender values are more egalitarian 
(Sanders, 1997). Furthermore, if a mother easily recalls the gender-specific life 
message ‘caring for others is important’, her ideal family life tends to be more 
traditional. Another salient finding is that the memory of a positively work-
orientated mother (even if she did not work) enhances egalitarian values and an 
egalitarian personal ideal family life of her daughter. Previous research has also 
demonstrated that socialization processes for women operate in particular through 
the transmission of attitudes and verbal persuasion by the mother (Moen et al., 
1997. p.291; Thornton, Alwin and Camburn 1983). In understanding mothers’ 
diverse values and ideals, which subsequently influence their labour market 
behaviour, it is thus relevant to focus on their personal biographies and the way in 
which parental values and attitudes were transmitted and continue to serve as 
(invisible) guides for their behaviour. Moreover, the salient effect of her parents 
on a mother’s current values and ideals suggest that a mother’s gender values and 
ideal family life remain to some extent stable over the course of her life, and is a 
part of her that will not easily adapt to changing personal circumstances or 
altering national institutions. 
Our findings further indicate that earlier professional and career support, 
whether by teachers (hypothesis 3), partners or people at work (hypothesis 4), 
correspond with more egalitarian values and ideal family life.  These results 
imply that, although the origin of a mother’s gender values and attitudes may lie 
in childhood socialization, they can be reinforced or weakened by the 
professional and career support of significant others later in life, or lack thereof 
(also Bolzendahl and Meyers, 2004; Cunningham et al., 2005; Kan, 2007; Moen 
et al., 1997).   
The full path model could explain a considerable part of the variance of Dutch 
mothers’ ideal family lives: a mother’s ideal family life is related to specific 
parental messages, to previous professional support from teachers and people at 
work (or lack of), a mother’s own general gender values (also socially 
embedded), her marital status, and her educational level. Mothers’ gender values 
and personal ideals clearly do not exist independently from social structures, but 
are formed within prior and diverse social bonds. The findings of this chapter 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
154 
enhance the understanding of how values and ideals are shaped and socially 
embedded, and add to the apprehension of why mothers react differently to social 
institutions, such as statutory laws and normative standards.   
Various qualifications of this study are in place. As mentioned above, the 
findings are based on retrospective questions, cross-sectional data and correlation 
coefficients. The conclusions regarding the impact of primary socialization are 
largely based on the respondents’ recollection of experiences from their youth. 
However, memories are selective and people may rationalise their own 
preferences and attitudes. Nevertheless, I believe that the answers of the 
respondents are quite accurate, since only 13 per cent stated that they found the 
questionnaire difficult, and 5 per cent thought the questions were not clear.  
 
 

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Chapter 6 
Intermezzo: the full model 
6.1 Introduction 
In this chapter, the two separate path analyses of chapters 4 and 5 are merged into 
one encompassing path model. The full model does not yield any substantially 
different results compared to the two separate models. Nonetheless, the bonus of 
the full analysis is that it explains the work attitudes “I work in order to be 
economically independent” and “I like to work” as dependent variables, which is 
relevant because these work attitudes significantly relate to a mother’s work 
preference.  
The results are briefly summed up in this chapter. Firstly, I will comment on 
the direct effects of all dependent variables as shown in table 20. Subsequently, 
the total effects (direct plus indirect) are displayed in table 21. The results will 
then be considered and discussed. 
6.2 
Mothers’ labour participation 
To examine which variables determine whether a mother has a paid job or not, we 
included all relevant background variables and the variable work preference in a 
logistic regression analysis. As is shown earlier, only work preference exerts a 
significant effect on participation in paid work (table 20). Work preference 
explains an important part of the variation in participation (0.46). In itself, this 
may not seem very surprising, but the impact of this attitudinal variable is so 
strong that the background characteristics of the mother, such as age, educational 
level, the number of children, the presence and the income of a partner do not 
have any direct influence at all. This is despite the fact that these variables play a 
crucial role in most sociological and economic theories on labour market 
behaviour. To the extent that these factors do matter, their influence is fully 
mediated by the work preference of the mother.  
 

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