Conventional Gender Roles Still Popular with American Youth, Study Shows

Although modern youth are often characterized by their liberal attitudes and willingness to challenge social norms, results of a new study show young people overall continue to prefer and even prioritize traditional roles of men as breadwinners and women as homemakers.

Researchers Brittany Dernberger, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, and Joanna Pepin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzed nearly 40 years (1976-2014) of responses to a nationally representative sample of high school seniors. The 17- and 18-year-olds were asked to imagine their future selves married with pre-school-aged children and to consider a variety of possible working arrangements, including: husband works full-time, wife doesn’t work; husband works full-time, wife works about half-time; husband doesn’t work, wife works full-time; husband works about half-time, wife works full-time; both work about half-time; and both work full-time. The teenagers then decided whether each arrangement was not at all acceptable, somewhat acceptable, acceptable or desirable.

While findings, published in Sociological Science, showed a greater openness to multiple types of arrangements, a conventional scenario—consisting of a husband working full-time and the wife staying at home—remained the most desired among high school students over time. Although there was a substantial decline in favor of this arrangement initially, decreasing from 44 percent in 1976 to around 25 percent by the 1990s, there has been minimal change since then. Fewer than five percent of youth desired gender atypical scenarios in which the husband does not work or works part-time and the wife works full-time. 

“Continued gender inequality at home and at work is frequently explained by a lack of ‘family-friendly’ policies like paid parental leave and affordable childcare,” said Dernberger. “However, these structural constraints are not the only barrier to manifesting equitable relationships. Our findings show just how sticky attitudes about gender continue to be.”

Dernberger and Pepin found attitudes about gender changed the most from 1976 until the mid-1990s, and then plateaued. There were few meaningful differences between demographic groups, suggesting these attitudes are quite widespread. However, when comparing views of white and African-American youth, they found that African-Americans were consistently open to a variety of division of labor scenarios throughout the four decades, but white youth became more open over time.

“While young people may not embrace gender equality to the extent many might assume, we’re not suggesting feminism is dead,” said Pepin, who received her Ph.D. from the UMD Department of Sociology in 2018. “However, our findings signal that shifts in attitudes about gender roles are happening more slowly than we may have realized and we can’t simply sit back and count on young people to deliver gender equity.”

Published on Mon, Feb 17, 2020 - 12:43PM