Chapter 4 - The vital and stabilising role of work preferences
127
attitudes, especially in highly tolerant societies such as the Netherlands, as if all
behaviours are regarded as acceptable (Hakim, 2003c, p.341).
Education has a similar effect on a mother’s preferred number of work hours
as on her actual work hours. However, the effect of age is the opposite. As the
years pass, a mother prefers to work more hours, up till the age of 43, after which
she prefers fewer work hours. The reason for this different impact of age on
actual work hours and preferred work hours is not clear, and would be an
interesting subject for future research. Possibly, it is related to a growing
discrepancy between preferences and actual labour market opportunities as
women become older. Remarkably, neither the presence nor the income of a
partner relates to a mother’s preferred number of work hours.
Finally, the analysis shows a profound effect of the presence of a working
mother during the respondent’s childhood on the subsequent work preference and
the gender and work attitudes of the now-adult daughter. Other recent Dutch
studies already demonstrated that having had a working mother affects Dutch
mothers’ work hours (Lut, Van Galen and Latten, 2010; Van Putten et al., 2008)
and their participation decision (Cloïn, 2010). The analysis confirms these results.
The effect of a mother in paid work seems especially mediated by her daughter’s
work preference. Moreover, the results suggest that the presence of a working
mother in childhood is more significant than previous studies have shown, since a
working mother during childhood (up to the age of 12) also affects her daughter’s
general gender values and personal gender and work attitudes, corresponding
with work preferences. This makes the total effect of a working mother in
childhood on the respondent’s work preferences significantly large. The result is
not only interesting in and of itself, but also reveals the constant role played by
preferences, which might otherwise be much more subject to changing
circumstances. Based on the results, I assume that in the Netherlands, the
preferred number of hours can be – to a certain extent – a valuable predictor of a
mother’s employment activity.
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Chapter 5
The social origins of Dutch mothers’ gender values and
ideal family life
44
5.1 Introduction
This chapter traces the origins of two kinds of gender attitudes, namely general
gender values (i.e. the gendered division of labour that a mother deems
appropriate for other people), and more personal lifestyle preferences (i.e. a
mother’s own ideal family life). A mother’s general gender value is measured
against a scale based on seven questions, which originate from the European
Social Survey (2009). Her personal gender attitude, or her ideal division of labour
with her own partner, is based on Hakim’s (2000) question regarding a mother’s
ideal family life. The distinction between general values and personal ideals is
important, because previous studies have shown that personal attitudes are a
better predictor of a mother’s labour market behaviour than her general gender
values (Hakim 2000, 2003c; Marks and Houston 2002a; Risman et al., 1999).
Therefore, the main dependent variable of this study is ideal family life, while
mothers’ general gender values are understood as underlying basic elements that
guide a mothers’s ideal family life (Ajzen, 1991; Becker, Van Deth and
Scarbrough, 1995, p.38; Van Enckevort and Enschedé, 1983, p.19-20). Firstly,
this chapter investigates how mothers’ ideal family lives – directly or indirectly
intermediated by her general gender values – are formed throughout their lives by
specific parental messages. Secondly, I shall examine the influence of perceived
career support from significant others, both at the onset of adulthood from
teachers and later in life through parents, peers, partners and work colleagues on
mothers’ general gender values and ideal family lives.
Previous studies have shown that, besides micro-economic factors such as
education and income, women’s different gender attitudes are important in
understanding their diverse labour market patterns (Beets, Liefbroer and de Jong,
1997; Bolzendahl and Meyers, 2004; Cloïn, 2010; Cunningham et al., 2005;
Hakim, 2000, 2003c; Himmelweit and Sigala 2004; Hoffnung, 2004; Kan, 2007;
Marks and Houston, 2002a; Risman, Atkinson and Blackwelder, 1999; Steiber
and Haas, 2009). Nonetheless, few studies have gone beyond current gender
attitudes and addressed the socializing factors formed prior to the experience of
44
This chapter is based on a paper that is provisionally accepted for publication by Sex Roles: a
Journal of Research (Springer).
Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers
130
motherhood and the combination of care and work commitments (Blair-Loy,
2003).
In 2010, 32.4 per cent of Dutch mothers were not in paid employment, 42.5
per cent worked from 12 to 24 hours a week, 13.8 per cent worked 25 to 35 hours
a week, and 11.3 per cent worked 36 hours or more (CBS Statline, 2011). The
typical Dutch pattern is often related to the statutory law and collective labour
agreements, which have created the opportunity for Dutch mothers to work part-
time (Tijdens, 2006). The relatively large variation makes the Netherlands an
interesting case on which to base a study of the causes of individual labour
market decisions by mothers. Why do some mothers have a full-time job, while
most mothers work part-time, and others are not employed at all?
The main research question is: To what extent can diverse socialization
processes explain the variation of Dutch mothers’ gender values and ideal family
life?
I test the hypotheses of this study with structural path analyses of data
collected in 2010 in a representative survey among 935 Dutch mothers, with at
least one child below the age of 13 living at home. The advantage of a structural
path model is that it enables us to examine the relationship between more than
one dependent variable (general gender values and ideal family life) and a
number of independent variables in a single regression analysis. However, the
analysis has some limitations because of the cross-sectional research design.
5.2
Macro background: the specific case of the Netherlands
For a long time, Dutch female labour participation, especially among married
women, was very low. In 1960, 25 per cent of women (Tijdens, 2006), and 7 per
cent of married women were employed, compared to 30 per cent of English and
33 per cent of French married women (Kloek, 2009). Since the 1960s, as in many
other Western countries, Dutch society changed radically through processes of
secularization, increased educational attainment of women, and the greater
acceptance of non-familial roles for women and familial roles for men (Sullivan,
2004), which have contributed to the changes in the “male-breadwinner family
model”. As a result, the female participation level had increased to 35 per cent by
1985 (Tijdens, 2006). This rise continued throughout the following decades,
resulting in one of the highest levels of female participation among the Western
countries, at almost 70 per cent in 2009 (OECD, 2013). However, this very strong
rise in female labour participation was accompanied by an equally strong rise of
part-time employment. Thus, most of the rise of female participation was in part-
time work (OECD, 2013).
Specific national characteristics can explain the heterogeneous employment -
yet dominantly part-time - pattern of Dutch women (Plantenga, 2002; Tijdens,
2006; Van Doorne-Huiskes and Schippers, 2010). In the 1970s and 1980s, when
female labour participation started to rise, there were few public childcare
facilities, which forced mothers who entered the labour market to combine their
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