A Time of Great Change: How Parents, Friends, and Classmates Shape Adolescents’ Attitudes towards the Gender Division of Labor

Abstract

Parents are crucial in the construction of their children’s attitudes towards the gender division of labor. However, little is known about the extent to which parents’ influences on their children’s attitudes weaken in favor of peers during adolescence. This study explores how gender beliefs of parents, friends, and classmates shape adolescents’ attitudes towards the gender division of labor in Sweden, Germany, England, and the Netherlands. It extends previous research which predominantly examined parent-child transmission. The analysis draws on 4645 children (at wave 1: Mage = 14.9, SDage = 0.67, females = 50%) of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. Regression analyses of within-person changes in attitudes show that adolescents on average become more egalitarian from age 15 to 16 and significantly adapt their own beliefs to those of their parents, friends, and classmates. In cases of opposing beliefs, adolescents tended to adapt more strongly to whoever held more egalitarian views, possibly aligning with more widespread norms of egalitarianism. The findings show great similarity in adaptation processes across countries and align well with a multi-layered conceptualization of gender as a social structure that shapes gender attitudes.

Islam and the Transmission of Cultural Identity in Four European Countries

“…Second, my focus on parent-adolescent dyads places strong constraints on what can be said about the stability of cultural transmission over the life course. Recent longitudinal work shows that cultural beliefs, as well as the interrelationships among them, can ebb and flow within individuals before cohering in late-adolescence (e.g., Sánchez Guerrero et al 2023). Therefore, the patterns documented in this study could break down (or even move in the opposite direction; cf.…”

“…A large body of quantitative research suggests that parent-to-child transmission drives cultural heterogeneity among immigrant-origin youth in Europe (Jacob and Kalter 2013;Maliepaard, Gijsberts, and Lubbers 2012;Sánchez Guerrero, Schober, and Vleuten 2023). As the story goes, over time and across generations, immigrant parents who are more able or inclined to pass their values, beliefs and attachments to their children will decelerate the process of acculturation for their daughters and sons (i.e., the acquisition of cultural identities aligned with the public culture of mainstream institutions), an outcome strongly patterned by religious affiliation (de Hoon and van Tubergen 2014; Kalmijn and Kraaykamp 2018;Soehl 2017).…”