A brand new research has revealed that ladies within the UK usually tend to undertake conventional gender roles after turning into moms, notably if their husbands earn larger incomes and maintain typical views on gender roles. The analysis, which analysed information from the UK Family Longitudinal Research, means that the transition into parenthood reinforces current inequalities inside {couples} quite than selling extra equitable divisions of labour. The findings had been revealed within the Journal of Marriage and Household.
The research examined adjustments in gender ideology amongst {couples} from 1991 to 2020, specializing in how people’ beliefs about gender roles advanced after having kids. The findings present that ladies who had been beforehand extra egalitarian of their views are inclined to shift in the direction of conventional views following childbirth. This shift is most pronounced in {couples} the place males have considerably larger earnings and maintain conservative gender beliefs.
Researchers famous that males’s views on gender roles had been extra different. In households the place ladies held egalitarian beliefs and contributed equally or extra to family revenue, males had been extra prone to undertake progressive views on gender roles. However in instances the place males earned considerably greater than their wives, they had been extra inclined to take care of and even strengthen conventional beliefs about gendered divisions of labour.
The research additionally highlighted how structural components equivalent to parental go away insurance policies and childcare prices contribute to reinforcing conventional gender roles. Whereas extra paternity go away was launched within the UK in 2011, uptake stays low. Many fathers decide to not take prolonged go away, leaving ladies to shoulder nearly all of childcare tasks. By 2021, the common price of a part-time nursery place for a kid beneath two had reached practically £140 per week, additional complicating ladies’s potential to stay in full-time employment.
The financial penalties of this shift are vital. Ladies who go away full-time employment or cut back their working hours after childbirth expertise long-term revenue penalties. The gender wage hole between moms and childless ladies stays substantial, and over time, ladies’s earnings decline relative to their companions’. By the point their eldest youngster reaches maturity, moms earn, on common, 30% lower than their husbands.
The findings recommend that the persistence of conventional gender roles just isn’t solely a results of particular person selection however is formed by financial and societal pressures. Even amongst {couples} who initially specific egalitarian beliefs, monetary disparities and childcare tasks create circumstances that result in a reversion to traditional roles. The research additionally signifies that {couples} the place each companions earn related incomes usually tend to keep progressive views on gender roles after turning into dad and mom.
