Does Parenthood Change Implicit Gender‐Role Stereotypes and Behaviors?

• Author: Judi Mesman,Joyce J. Endendijk,Belle Derks
• Date: 01 February 2018
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12451

J J. E Utrecht University

B D Utrecht University∗

J M Leiden University∗∗

Does Parenthood Change Implicit Gender-Role

Stereotypes and Behaviors?

This study examined whether parenthood

changes gender-role behavior and implicit

gender-role stereotypes as assessed with an

Implicit Association Test in Dutch parents. In a

cross-sectional sample, parents were found to

have more traditional gender-role stereotypes

than nonparents with a wish to have a child

and nonparents without the wish to have a

child. This suggests that gender-role stereotypes

increase after the transition into parenthood.

In a longitudinal sample, parents were fol-

lowed for 4 years after the rst birthday of their

youngest child. The authors found that implicit

gender-role stereotypes and behavior became

increasingly traditional over time in most par-

ents, except for the following two groups: (a)

Fathers with highly traditional gender-role

stereotypes did not show change over time

and (b) older, highly educated mothers who

worked relatively many hours outside the home

and who had an egalitarian task division at

Child and Adolescent Studies, Utrecht University,

Heidelberglaan 1, 3548 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

∗Department of Social, Health and Organisational

Psychology, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3548 CS,

Utrecht, The Netherlands.

∗∗Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University,

Wassenaarseweg52, 2333 AK, Leiden, The Netherlands.

(mesmanj@fsw.leidenuniv.nl).

Key Words: fathers, gender roles, longitudinal, mothers,

parenthood, stereotypes.

home, remained egalitarian in their gender-role

stereotypes over time.

Becoming a parent is a life-changing moment

in which the gender-role behavior of men and

women appears to become more traditional.

For example, after the arrival of a baby, moth-

ers are more likely to decrease work hours

outside the home (Paull, 2008) and increase

the time they spend on housework and child

care (Yavorsky, Kamp Dush, Schoppe-Sullivan,

2015), whereas fathers’ work hours and income

tend to remain stable or even increase (Kaufman

& Uhlenberg, 2000). Because more traditional

gender roles negatively impact career success

in women (Mayrhofer, Meyer, Schifnger, &

Schmidt, 2008) and promote gender inequality

and traditional gender stereotypes in children

(Turner & Gervai, 1995), it is important to study

processes underlying this change. In the current

investigation, we examined whether parenthood

experiences lead to more traditional implicit

gender-role stereotypes in Dutch men and

women and whether these changes are associ-

ated with changes in gender-role behavior (hours

in paid work, perceived task division). Using a

cross-sectional design, we rst tested whether

implicit gender-role stereotypes and gender-role

behavior are more traditional among parents

than nonparents. Using a longitudinal design,

we then tested whether implicit gender-role

stereotypes and gender-role behavior of parents

Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (February 2018): 61–79 61

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12451

62 Journal of Marriage and Family

with young children become increasingly more

traditional during the rst years of parenthood.

We studied changes in implicit gender stereo-

types in the Netherlands, which scores high on

gender equality, and here one might not expect

gender roles to still have such an impact.

B

Work–Family Conict and Gender-Role

Stereotypes

Many new parents nd it challenging to balance

the competing demands of paid work and fam-

ily life (Blair-Loy, 2009). How parents solve

work–family conicts and determine the divi-

sion of labor depends on many factors, including

economic factors (Becker, 1991) and national

family policies (Sjöberg, 2004), but also on per-

vasive gender-role norms, particularly women’s

role of homemaker and men’s role of economic

provider (Wood & Eagly, 2002). There are,

however, individual differences in adherence to

societal gender roles, known as “gender exi-

bility” (Gerson, 2009, p. 10). More xed, rigid

stereotypes that clearly dene separate roles

for men and women would lead to less gender

exibility in breadwinning and caretaking than

more exible or egalitarian views of gender

roles. In line with these propositions, fathers’

stronger adherence to traditional gender-role

stereotypes predicts more time in paid work

(Kaufman & Uhlenberg, 2000), less time in

household work (Coltrane & Ishii-Kuntz, 1992),

and less time with their children (Bulanda,

2004). Similarly, mothers’ stronger adherence

to traditional gender-role stereotypes is asso-

ciated with lower earnings and less time in

paid work (Christie-Mizell & Erickson, 2007;

Stickney & Konrad, 2007).

The Importance of Studying Implicit

Gender-Role Stereotypes

The gender-role stereotypes that new parents

report do not always align with the actual divi-

sion of labor in a family (Coltrane, 1990). One

explanation for this difference might lie in the

power differential in income within couples,

which reduces women’s power to bargain out

of domestic labor (Bittman, England, Sayer,

Folbre, & Matheson, 2003) and makes acting in

accordance with egalitarian attitudes difcult.

Another reason for this difference could be

people’s lack of awareness of their gender-role

stereotypes or an unwillingness to express

their actual stereotypes. Social desirability

bias is a common problem when assessing

explicit or self-reported stereotypes (Green-

wald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009),

especially in higher educated samples (Krysan,

1998) and societies that value gender equality.

Explicit gender stereotypes reect directly stated

or overtly expressed ideas. Implicit gender-role

stereotypes, on the other hand, operate largely

outside conscious awareness and are most often

assessed with the Implicit Association Test(IAT;

Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). The IAT

paradigm is based on automatic and fast or habit-

ual responding, which makes it less prone to

social-desirability bias. Therefore, in the current

investigation we focus on implicit rather than

explicit gender-role stereotypes. Discrepancies

found between implicit egalitarian gender-role

stereotypes and actual gender-role behavior

are likely to reect a difculty with acting in

accordance with one’s egalitarian values.

Although widely used, the IAT has also been

criticized. For example, it is not entirely clear

whether implicit tasks measure a person’s own

stereotypes or knowledge of culturally shared

attitudes (De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba,

Spruyt, & Moors, 2009). Moreover, test–retest

reliability has been found to be low to moderate,

ranging from .25 to .69 (Lane, Banaji, Nosek,

& Greenwald, 2007), indicating that the IAT

is sensitive to context effects. Furthermore, the

IAT is not valid for making inferences about

individuals and should only be used as a research

tool for increasing awareness of implicit stereo-

types and its consequences (Greenwald et al.,

2009). However, the value of the IAT in light of

these critiques is most clearly shown in that it

has meta-analytically been found to outperform

explicit stereotype measures in the prediction of

actual behavior, in particular for controversial

subjects such as gender and race (Greenwald

et al., 2009).

We used the family–career IAT, which

assesses how strongly a person automatically

associates the concepts of career and family

with masculine and feminine gender (Nosek,

Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002). Stereotypes

can range from strong traditional (i.e., faster

and less errors responding to career–men,

family–women associations) to counter stereo-

typical (i.e., faster and less errors responding to

career-women, family–men associations; Nosek

et al., 2002). Previous work has demonstrated