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Chapter 4 - The vital and stabilising role of work preferences 
109 
Hakim (2003) and Ajzen (1991) both acknowledged these constraining 
influences. For example, Hakim demonstrated that 41 per cent of home-centred 
women actually work full-time out of financial necessity (Hakim, 2003c, p.131). 
She claimed that both the structural and individual perspectives are necessary and 
complementary (Hakim, 2003c, p.237-240). Ajzen and Fishbein (2005) also 
reckoned that the theory of planned behaviour has its limits. For example, lack of 
volitional control can prevent people from carrying out an intended behaviour: 
unexpected events can lead to changes in intentions (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, 
p.208). 
As mentioned, what most sociological studies miss is disentangling the more 
abstract concepts of work and gender attitudes and the more concrete number of 
hours a woman prefers to work. For example, Hakim (2000) assumed that 
different work life preferences automatically translate into a particular number of 
desired work hours (also Risman et al., 1999; Stähli, 2009). Home-centred 
women, who have traditional gender attitudes and do not perceive themselves as 
the main providers, are expected to desire no paid work at all. Work-centred 
women, who prefer symmetrical gender roles with their spouses, who perceive 
themselves as the household providers and who would still work in case they win 
the lottery, are assumed to prefer a full-time job (Hakim, 2003c).  
In my view the concepts of work preferences and attitudes must be treated 
separately. The preferred number of work hours is, as mentioned above, to be 
interpreted as the concrete result of internal considerations of what a mother likes, 
what she conceives as possible, and what she perceives others expect her to do. 
This study perceives attitudes to be a set of conscious and unconscious ideas or 
moral views about various aspects of life in general. Moreover, I distinguish 
between general attitudes (or values) and personal attitudes (or lifestyle 
preferences) (Cloïn, 2010; Marks and Houston, 2002a; Risman et al., 1999). What 
is considered appropriate for others appears not always ideal for one-self. General 
gender values often seem vague and inconsistent with people’s own personal 
plans, and people’s answers to questions about their general values can be prone 
to social desirability (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2005, p.176; Hakim, 2003c, p.63; 
Marks and Houston 2002b, p.322; Smithson and Stoke, 2005). For example, 
women may believe that mothers should be free to return to work soon after 
childbirth, but may still be reluctant to return to work soon themselves. Research 
has shown that personal attitudes have a significant effect on labour market 
decisions, whereas more general gender values seem to have no effect (Risman et 
al., 1999) or a much smaller effect (Marks and Houston, 2002a, 2002b).  
Furthermore, this paper distinguishes work attitudes from gender attitudes, 
since job ambitions and motherhood ideals often exist in different spheres. For 
example, Katchadourian and Boli (1994) concluded that women as well as men 
were better prepared for the world of work than they were for family life (in 
Hoffnung, 2004, p.712). Marks and Houston (2002a) found that work 
commitment was the attitudinal factor that best explained women’s employment 
behaviour, while women’s ideological views on motherhood did not differ: all 

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Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
110 
agreed that motherhood is more important than work. Work attitudes are, here, 
defined as a personal motivation to pursue paid work. Previous studies found that 
the intrinsic characteristics of work (self-development, colleagues) are more 
important for women than the extrinsic characteristics (pay, career-possibilities 
and status), than to men (Cloïn, 2010; Merens et al., 2012). 
This study assumes that general values and personal attitudes lead to 
preferences, which result in a particular behaviour. Situational circumstances and 
demographic factors also affect people’s preferences, although the hypothesis is 
that these factors have less impact on mother’s work preferences than values and 
attitudes. The second hypothesis reads:  
A mother’s preferred number of work hours is primarily influenced by her 
general gender values and her personal gender and work attitudes. 
4.4 
Parental characteristics during childhood and its impact on 
mothers’ preferences and attitudes 
As mentioned, a criticism against the attitudinal-behavioural relationship is that it 
draws the wrong conclusion regarding the causal direction (Crompton and Harris, 
1998, p.140; Cunningham et al., 2005; Kan, 2005). These critics underline the 
reciprocal character of attitudes and behaviour: work experiences can reinforce or 
weaken original attitudes. With a cross-sectional analysis this kind of criticism 
cannot be refuted. Moreover, I do not dispute the fact that the relationship is 
reciprocal. Yet, I do aspire to revealing some of the origins of attitudes and 
preferences prior to mothers’ current life and work conditions, and thus 
unravelling the more stable parts of values, attitudes and preferences.    
In order to be able to understand these stable parts I make use of socialization 
theory. Socialization theory focuses on the relational context in which specific 
normative standards and expectations are transmitted (Berger and Luckmann, 
1967). Through the process of socialization, people internalize society’s norms 
and values, and learn to perform their social role as a worker, a parent, a friend, a 
citizen, and so forth (Bandura, 1977; Handel, 2006; Wallace and Wolf, 2006). 
Berger and Luckmann (1967) distinguished between primary socialization during 
childhood and secondary socialization, which occurs throughout life. Primary 
socialization takes place in the period when children meet significant others, the 
parents (or other people who are in charge of upbringing the child), with whom 
they identify emotionally. Childhood is seen as the most important period in life, 
in which the basic structure of the individual’s objective social world is built, 
with which all later situations are compared. 
The influence of parents on adult attitudes and behaviour is confirmed by 
various empirical studies, although its character and strength may vary, for 
example by social class, the temperament of the child, and the reciprocity within 
the relationship (Grusec and Hastings, 2007; Kraaijkamp, 2009; Lareau, 2007). 

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