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Chapter 8 - Synthesis: overview and discussion 
201 
which revealed the potential positive influence of teachers on the work 
aspirations of mothers. The obvious advantage of quantitative analyses is that 
larger respondent groups are addressed and relationships can be observed in a 
statistical manner. The quantitative analysis did reveal that teachers being 
encouraging towards mothers’ professional choice related significantly to 
mothers’ egalitarian personal gender attitudes (i.e. her ideal family life).  
Partners 
Previous research has shown that sex-role attitudes between partners are often 
similar, and both partners’ attitudes are important in a mother’s employment 
decision (Inman-Amos et al., 1994; Geist, 2005; Philliber and Vannoy-Hiller, 
1990; Uunk, 1996; Vlasblom and Schippers, 2005). This conclusion was 
confirmed by both the qualitative and quantitative findings of this study. Firstly, 
the quantitative analysis showed that more egalitarian general gender values 
related to the perceived presence of a partner who is stimulating towards mother’s 
work ambitions. Because of the relatively limited information that comes from 
the quantitative analysis, it is particularly interesting to compare this result with 
the qualitative findings.  
Mothers’ life path narratives revealed that mothers are inclined to look for 
relationships that sustain rather than reject their self-identities formed in 
childhood. The egalitarian interviewees often shared their lives with partners who 
were stimulating towards their career ambitions, who were willing to take up an 
(almost) equal share of the unpaid tasks at home; consequently these mothers did 
not need to work less if their husband had demanding jobs. Narratives of 
traditional/adaptive mothers revealed opposite patterns: their job ambitions, 
especially concerning the weekly work hours, were seldom explicitly discussed 
with their partners, as is also shown by the previous Dutch research of Portegijs et 
al. (2008b, also Keuzenkamp et al., 2009). Moreover, these mothers cited the 
demanding jobs of their partners as one of the reasons they had ‘chosen’ the stay-
at-home option. However the study demonstrates that the justification mechanism 
among women who say they do not work or work less because their husbands 
have such demanding jobs, is indeed troubled, as is previously argued by Van 
Doorne-Huiskes and Schippers (2010). Their earlier employment decisions often 
entailed scaling back their number of hours worked, and were based – at least 
partly, and often unintentionally – on their own adaptive/traditional gender 
attitudes, making it possible for their partners to continue their demanding jobs.  
Nonetheless, apparently the selection process among some traditional/ 
adaptive mothers unintentionally had unfavourable consequences on their own 
lives. They continued to live in social relational contexts wherein their 
professional life was neglected. Moreover both partners were most likely unaware 
of how their social constructions of daily life re-enforced stereotypical gender 
roles. These engendered social practices may also have had negative 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers  
202 
consequences for their partners, since their (growing) sense of being an involved 
father in family, might have been unintentionally interrupted, or left undeveloped.   
People at work 
The quantitative analysis demonstrated a relatively strong relationship between 
the perceived support of motivating supervisors and/or colleagues towards 
fulfilling a mother’s full potential at work, and her egalitarian gender values and 
attitudes. The qualitative findings (again) revealed a process of self-selection: 
mothers who ‘inherited’ egalitarian attitudes more often met encouraging 
supervisors at least once in their lives, compared to traditional/adaptive mothers. 
Notably, most previous research has demonstrated the opposite pattern: family 
demands and mothers’ ambitions are often neglected by supervisors (Estes, 2005; 
Karatepe and Kilic, 2007; King 2008; Moen and Yu, 2000), contributing to the 
withdrawal of mothers from the labour market. The conclusion of this study 
enhances our understanding of why most Dutch mothers continue to work part-
time, whereas a relatively small group of mothers, approximately 25 per cent, 
have large part-time jobs or work full-time: meeting a stimulating supervisor is 
probably more a consequence of mothers’ own attitudes than a cause.  
Peers 
The impact of peer groups on mothers’ gender and work attitudes is undecided. 
The quantitative analysis could not trace any significant effect. A reason might be 
that, as is revealed by the interview analysis, mothers generally do not belong to a 
homogenous peer group, such as adolescents. Dutch mothers rather have a 
mixture of old friends and new acquaintances. Nonetheless, anonymous people 
‘out there’ seem, at least in the mind of some interviewees, able to influence a 
mother’s feelings. Stay-at-home mothers appear especially sensitive to the critical 
gaze and comments of other people. But there were also some stories of 
egalitarian mothers in which they disclosed that ‘traditional’ social environments 
were reasons for them to move to other neighbourhoods, where they were more 
surrounded by people with similar gender attitudes.  This is a mechanism 
illustrating that people do not easily adjust their attitudes, but rather find ways to 
reconcile them. 
In general, the qualitative findings with respect to the process of secondary 
socialization showed that mothers with egalitarian gender values and (personal) 
attitudes, which originated in childhood, have in later life more often been in the 
presence of supporting secondary socializations agents, like teachers, partners and 
people at work, compared to mothers with relatively traditional gender attitudes. 
Dutch mothers’ diverse current gender and work attitudes have some discerning 
origins in childhood, and these aspects of attitudes which originated in childhood 
appear to have some continuity during the course of their lives through their 
relationships with secondary others. It seems unlikely that a mother’s gender 

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