Chapter 8 - Synthesis: overview and discussion
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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
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