Parent-Child Time or Financial Providing: How First- and Third-Order Beliefs About What “Good” Parents Should Prioritize Depend on Parents’ Gender, Social Class, and Children’s Ages

In the U.S., progress to reduce gender inequality has slowed in recent years. Although attitudes about work and family have become more gender-egalitarian, work-family behaviors have been slower to change. This slowed progress and disconnect between beliefs and behavior have been termed the “unfinished” gender revolution.

One possible explanation for the apparent dissonance between beliefs and behavior is that people’s beliefs are simply more complicated than common measures of gender ideology can detect. Common measures typically give little attention to attitudes toward fathers’ work-family behavior, the trade-offs that more gender-egalitarian work-family behavior might require, and contextual information other than gender that might affect attitudes. These three factors form what I term the “fathers, trade-offs, and context blind spot” in gender attitudes research. This blind spot may cause scholars to overestimate feminist sentiment and, by extension, the extent to which beliefs outpace behaviors.

Another possible explanation for the unfinished gender revolution is “cultural lag.” This perspective suggests that broadly, people’s personal beliefs (i.e., first-order beliefs) have indeed become more gender-egalitarian but perceptions of “most people’s” beliefs (i.e., third-order beliefs) are slower to change and thus more gender-traditional. These third-order beliefs are theorized to impede people from fully acting on their own more egalitarian first-order beliefs. A key part of the cultural lag explanation is that third-order beliefs about gender, work, and family are more traditional than first-order beliefs. However, few studies have directly compared the two types of beliefs.

This dissertation seeks to expand understandings of these two (mutually compatible) explanations for the unfinished gender revolution by (1) incorporating fathers, trade-offs, and context into scholarship on gender attitudes while (2) comparing both first- and third-order beliefs to test whether the latter are more gender-traditional, as cultural lag theory suggests. To accomplish these aims, I conducted an original survey experiment and 37 qualitative interviews with experiment participants to examine beliefs about and evaluations of parents’ work-family trade-offs. More specifically, I examined how and why first- and third-order beliefs differ, and how attitudes toward parents’ work-family trade-offs depend on not only parents’ gender, but also on their children’s ages and social class.

Broadly, my findings demonstrate that cultural lag has greater relevance for views toward fathers than mothers—especially fathers of young children. By demonstrating that third-order beliefs about how fathers should handle work-family trade-offs are more gender-traditional than first-order beliefs, my dissertation suggests that cultural lag may help explain why fathers’ changes have not kept pace with mothers. I further contribute to our understanding of fathers and cultural lag by drawing on my qualitative data to theorize that perceptions of financially-intensive parenting may play a key role in sustaining normative expectations for fathers to prioritize providing above all else—even as people may personally prefer a more involved fathering model under certain conditions.

My findings also demonstrate that first-order enthusiasm for “involved fathers” is greatest for middle-class fathers of young children. Participants hold fathers to more gender-traditional standards not only when financial constraints are higher (i.e., the family is working-class), but also when childcare constraints are lower (i.e., children are older). The more context-dependent nature of views toward fathers’ trade-offs is key for making sense of the unfinished gender revolution because it suggests that beliefs and behavior may not be so far apart after all. Rather, established measures of gender attitudes—which largely omit fathers, trade-offs, and context—may simply be too blunt a tool for assessing contemporary support for egalitarian social change.

Overall, my dissertation offers partial support for both explanations for the “unfinished gender revolution” that inspired this project and underscores the need for scholarship to examine both first- and third-order beliefs about gender, work, and family, while also incorporating fathers, trade-offs, and context.