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Chapter 7 - Exploring the social biographical patterns of Dutch mothers’ attitudes 
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authority.”  (Astrid, 42 years old, 3 children, stay-at-home mother, adaptive 
gender attitude and higher polytechnic school). 
“I actually don’t know. I don’t have the impression that she missed anything.” 
(Tineke, 38 years old, 2 children, 24 hours, traditional/adaptive gender 
attitude, intermediate educational level). 
Almost half of the mothers of traditional or adaptive daughters worked jobs, 
mostly part-time, often to assist their husbands in their store or family company. 
Sometimes these mothers’ return to work meant an essential change of family 
life, which was not always liked by their daughters. Especially if their mothers 
became too occupied with their jobs, their daughters could come to feel 
neglected. As a consequence, two daughters tend to show the opposite behaviour 
of their mothers, now they are mothers themselves. This is illustrated by Nora (40 
years old, 4 children, temporarily stay-at-home mother, adaptive gender attitude, 
university degree):  “I thought it’s constantly about you and it’s constantly about 
your job. And for her, it was a huge part of her confidence; she got a lot of self-
esteem from her work. I found that really stupid.” 
The parental work ethic received by daughters with now traditional or 
adaptive gender attitudes was: follow a good education to be able to contribute to 
society. The narratives of stay-at-home mothers in particular reveal that after they 
finished high school, their parents were not particularly helpful in assisting their 
daughter’s choice of continuation course or profession. “They never asked me, 
‘what do you want to be, what is important for you?’“ (Leontien, 42 years old, 
four children, stay-at-home mother, traditional/adaptive, university degree). 
The family backgrounds of the interviewed mothers with egalitarian attitudes 
appear more diverse. Remarkably, the interviewees were often raised in non-
standard families. Roughly one third of the mothers with egalitarian attitudes 
were solely raised by their mothers, as a result of divorce or through alcoholism, 
disability or death of the father. Sophie describes her youth with her alcoholic 
father. “He read nothing, didn’t have one friend, no contact with the neighbours, 
or anything. When we came home,he just sat there, sloshed in his chair, and every 
day a lot of fuss, you know, shouting in the house.” (Sophie, 48 years, one child, 
32 hours, egalitarian, intermediate educational level). 
Yvette describes her childhood after her father had deceased when she was 8 
years old: “It was just natural that everyone did something. You saw that mom did 
everything and that was not right, so we helped. We got the groceries; my mother 
was not a very domestic mother. So we actually grew up like this: we had to take 
care of ourselves and of mom.” (Yvette, 42 years old, 2 children, 30 hours, 
adaptive/egalitarian, intermediate polytechnic).  
Other stories of egalitarian mothers reveal that their parents did not give them 
much attention when they were young. One daughter went to a boarding school in 
England, another daughter experienced traumatic family happenings at a young 
age, which preoccupied her parents, and there were parents who always fought.  
Additionally, the mothers describe upbringing matters that made them 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
176 
independent women, sometimes reluctantly. For example, some mothers were 
only eleven or twelve years old when they were made responsible for taking care 
of their parents’ shop while they were away on vacation, or for baby-sitting much 
younger brothers and sisters. One respondent was ‘pushed’ onto the train to 
Amsterdam alone (while living in Groningen, 220 km away) so that she could go 
and purchase her desired rucksack.  
Also discerned from the narratives is the role of respondents’ own mothers, 
who generally were not described as self-evident and consenting mother-figures, 
as is the picture that emerged in the chronicles of traditional/adaptive mothers. 
Regularly, their respondents asserted that if their mothers had lived in the present, 
they certainly would have worked, or would have had a different job. The 
daughters often describe their mothers as being clever, assertive, full of initiative 
and reluctant to fulfil the mother role. Two egalitarian mothers saw their mothers 
as anti-examples as well, in the sense that their mothers behaved as victims of 
their era and complained about not having had the chance to do the profession 
they would have liked. It seems that such mothers’ reluctant attitudes towards the 
traditional mother role, and subsequent feelings of regret, have stimulated their 
daughters to fulfil their own work potential.  
What also stands out is that among mothers with the most egalitarian attitudes 
(often full-time working mothers), there are some examples of fathers who were 
not the traditional (dominant) father figures, but who helped with household 
chores and raising the children. “My mother was the boss, still is actually. I have 
a very sweet, quiet father. He’s not dominant or so [...] My father brought us to 
school and made food for us. And my dad did the dishes, vacuum cleaned, etc.” 
(Ebru, 40 years, 2 children, 40 hours, egalitarian, university degree). 
“My father always did the dishes all by himself. And still, when I have dinner 
at my parents place, my father says, ‘Sit down and chat. I want to hear your 
conversations, and I’ll do the dishes.’ He cleans the whole kitchen on his own. 
Then he will ask “Who cares for tea or coffee?” (Alisha, 43 years old, one 
child, 36 hours, egalitarian, secondary school. Alisha grew up with 7 brothers 
and 1 sister). 
Another pattern among mothers with egalitarian attitudes is that they have 
explicitly or implicitly received the message (verbal symbol): “Make sure you 
can stand on your own two feet”, or “You must not rely on a man”. As mentioned 
before, it was not always necessary to spell out the message, but obvious because 
their mothers were sole providers.  
“Particularly my mother used to encourage me a lot, and I feel it is nice to 
have a lot of encouragement. Yet, maybe my mother encouraged me a little bit 
too much.” (Michelle, 47 years old, 2 children, 40 hours, egalitarian, 
university degree). 
“Straight after finishing high school, I went to university, and that was really 
because my mother was pushing me, like ‘you should not spill a year, then you 

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