Saying and Doing Gender: Early Vertical Transmission of Attitudes towards the Sexual Division of Labour

The existing divergence between increasingly pro-egalitarian gender attitudes and persisting sex-typical behaviours bears an important question for gender socialization research: what matters most for the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes, parental own attitudes or parental behaviours? Recent models in cultural economics suggest that intentional attitudinal transmission is the main driver of cultural reproduction. In line with classical sex-role learning models, we contend, however, that what parents do is at least as important as what parents say for gender-role transmission. Using data for British children aged between 11 and 15 we estimate the independent influence of each of these two socialization channels on children’s attitudes towards the sexual division of labour. We find that both parental atttitudes and parental behaviour are critical in the formation of children’s attitudes towards the sexual division of labour. We also show that these early attitudes have consequences for adult gender attitudes and behaviour.