Chapter 5 - The social origins of Dutch mothers’ gender values and ideal family life
139
should earn money, while the mother takes care of the household and the family”
(see table 9 for a full list of the statements). The possible answers were: 1: fully
disagree; 2: disagree; 3: neither agree nor disagree; 4: agree; 5: fully agree. A
factor analysis showed that these variables load on one dimension. By adding the
answers to each of the questions and rescaling, I created a variable ranging from 0
(the most traditional general gender values) to 1 (the most egalitarian). This scale
is highly reliable (Cronbach’s Alpha 0.781).
Table 9. General gender values: Into what extent do you agree with the following
propositions
a
?
N Mean
Std.
Deviation
1.
A working mother’s relationship with her children can be just
as close and warm as
that of a non-working mother
837 3.96
1.103
2.
A child that is not yet attending school is likely to suffer the
consequences if his or her mother has a job
837 2.49
1.193
3.
Fathers ought to do more in terms of household work than they
do at present
837 3.40
.857
4.
Fathers ought to do more in terms of childcare than they do at
present
837 3.45
.843
5.
The father should earn money, while
the mother takes care of
the household and the family
837 1.95
.891
6.
A woman is more suited to rearing young children than a man
837
2.74
1.056
7.
Overall, family life suffers the consequences if the mother has a
full-time job
837 2.90
1.275
Source: ‘Politics and Values’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg, November 2010.
a
All items range from 1 (fully disagree) to 5 (fully agree), answers on question 1, 3 and 4 are
reversed recoded and after computing the scale, the whole scale is reversed running from 0
(traditional) to 1 (egalitarian): Cronbach’s Alpha 0.781
A mother’s ideal family life
The second dependent variable is based on a question suggested by Hakim
(2000): ‘Which family life is closest to your ideal family life?’. This is just one of
three questions suggested by Hakim to trace women’s lifestyle preferences. The
two other questions concern women’s work centeredness are not included in this
study: firstly, whether she would still work even without economic
necessity, and
secondly, what are her perceptions concerning primary earner identity (Hakim,
2003). In the questionnaire, respondents were asked about their personal work
centeredness: What are the main reasons that you work? A respondent could pick
three out of eleven possible answers. Factor analysis showed, however, that these
answers and a mother’s ideal family life could not be reduced to a single
dimension. Therefore a mother’s personal work attitudes are
not included in the
analysis.
The possible answers are shown in table 10. This variable is recoded into
three categories, viz. a traditional ideal family life (answering category 1), an
adaptive ideal family life (answering category 2) and an egalitarian ideal family
Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers
140
life (answering categories 3 to 6). One in eight mothers endorses a traditional
ideal
family life, a little more than one third has an adaptive ideal family life (a
full-time working husband and a part-time working mother) and a little more than
half of the mothers prefer an equal division of labour with their men.
Table 10. Which family life is closest to your ideal family life?
% agree
1.
A family in which my partner works full-time and I take care of the household tasks
and child care
12
2.
A family in which my partner works full-time and I work part-time and take the
main responsibility of the household tasks and child care
36
3.
A family in which both parents
share equally paid labour, household tasks and child
care
49
4.
A family in which I work full-time and my partner works part-time and he (or she)
takes the main responsibility of the household tasks and child care
.7
5.
A family in which I work full-time and my partner takes care of the household tasks
and child care.
.2
6.
A single parent family in which I work and take care of the household tasks and
child care
2.9
7.
No children
.4
N = 930
Source: ‘Women and their social environment’, Liss Panel, Centerdata, University of Tilburg,
November 2010.
Independent variables
Parental values
Firstly, the respondents were asked which were the most important norms and
values that they remembered being transmitted by their parents. They could
choose three options from eleven items, such as “a good education is important”,
“caring for others is important” and “you have to work to be financially
independent of others” (see table 11 for the full list).
By this way of questioning, I
force the respondents to only choose parental norms and values that have a strong
link in memory. Ajzen and Fishbein (2005) assumed that the strength of an
attitude is related to the strength of the association: the stronger the attitude, the
more automatically and frequently accessible the association is from memory.
Since the respondents could only pick a maximum of three answers, the
questions cannot be transformed straightforwardly into a single variable.
Therefore, I included each attitude that was mentioned as a separate dichotomous
variable in the analysis.