The boy-girl factor: gender role attitudes and the impact of entry into parenthood

Presenter: Alice Lazzati, University of Oxford

Author: Alice Lazzati

This paper investigates the impact of entry into parenthood on gender role attitudes. Considering a sample of British men and women in their childbearing age (taken from the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society), we measure gender equality beliefs on four attitudinal statements consistent with the literature, rated on a five-point scale. Firstly, we exploit the panel features of the survey to analyse the direct effect of entry into parenthood on gender role attitudes. Our results underline that the change in attitudes is explained only to a certain extent by socio-economic variables and that they are often revised following certain life course experiences. In line with previous studies, women tend to become more conservative after childbearing, validating the ‘cognitive dissonance’ hypothesis under which women adapt their beliefs and expectations to their choices and behaviour. Men, on the contrary, are not found to experience the same dynamics. Lastly, we investigate the impact of parenting daughters for both men and women, showing that the event, differently from most of previous literature, triggers men to become more conservative relative to parenting a son.