Parents’ beliefs about gender predict their involvement in childcare and housework, according to a study published in the Journal of Social Psychology. The researchers found that British parents in non-traditional arrangements where the mother is the breadwinner supported more egalitarian views of gender and fewer biological essentialist beliefs compared to parents in traditional roles.
Egalitarian family arrangements are slowly becoming more accepted. Yet the traditional family structure where the father is the breadwinner and the mother cares for the children and household remains the most popular arrangement. This gendered division of labor and childcare has been extensively studied, although little is known about the psychosocial processes behind it.
Study authors Mariana Pinho and Ruth Gaunt conducted a study to explore how parents’ deep-seated ideas about gender predict their division of family roles. To do this, they compared the gender ideologies of parents in traditional families to the ideologies of parents in role-reversed couples where the mother is the primary earner and the father is the primary caregiver. They also compared the two groups of parents’ biological essentialist beliefs — implicit beliefs that assume that men and women have inherent predispositions to occupy distinct family roles.
The sample consisted of 353 British parents in heterosexual couples. The parents were between the ages of 22 and 62 and had at least one child aged 5 and under. The participants completed questionnaires that assessed their attitudes toward gender (e.g., “Men and women should share housework when both are employed”) and biological essentialist views (e.g., “Mothers are instinctively better caretakers than fathers”). The surveys also assessed mothers’ gatekeeping behavior — the tendency for mothers, often unintentionally, to limit fathers from engaging in childcare or household responsibilities.
The participants additionally read a list of 24 household and childcare tasks and indicated which ones they and their partners were responsible for. They also indicated how many hours they and their partners worked per week, and how many hours they each spent caring for their children.
The initial analysis revealed that parents who were in non-traditional roles (women who were breadwinners and men who were primary caregivers) supported more egalitarian beliefs and fewer biological essentialist beliefs. Multiple regression analyses further revealed that parents’ gender ideologies predicted their division of household tasks.
More egalitarian beliefs among mothers predicted a lower share of childcare tasks, while more egalitarian beliefs among fathers predicted a greater share of childcare tasks. More biological essentialism among mothers predicted greater involvement in childcare and housework, while more biological essentialism among fathers predicted lower involvement in childcare.
“Participants’ biological essentialism brought the largest contribution when explaining their involvement in childcare and housework,” Pinho and Gaunt report. “Therefore, findings related to the participants’ beliefs that men and women are equally able to nurture appear to explain to a greater degree parents’ involvement in childcare, housework and the amount of time dedicated to such tasks.”
It was also revealed that women who were breadwinners engaged in less maternal gatekeeping compared to women who were primary caregivers. Moreover, maternal gatekeeping mediated the link between mothers’ gender ideologies and their engagement in housework and childcare. Women who endorsed more egalitarian ideologies tended to engage in less maternal gatekeeping behavior, and in turn, took on a more equal share of childcare and household tasks. Maternal gatekeeping also mediated the link between mothers’ essentialist beliefs and their engagement in childcare — mothers with fewer essentialist beliefs tended to adopt less maternal gatekeeping, and in turn, took on a more equal share of childcare responsibilities.
The study authors note a few limitations to the study. For one, the methodology does not reveal a direction of effects, and it may be possible that parents’ involvement in childcare influences their beliefs about gender and essentialism. Secondly, the sample was predominantly White, middle class, and well-educated, and the results may not generalize to other groups.
The study, “Biological essentialism, gender ideologies, and the division of housework and childcare: comparing male carer/female breadwinner and traditional families”, was authored by Mariana Pinho and Ruth Gaunt.