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Gender Roles and Families

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

Abstract

The chapter addresses the complex interplay between the new roles of women and men and the diversity of family life courses (focusing on heterosexual individuals) in advanced societies, most specifically Europe and the USA, from the 1960s onward. The multiple equilibria framework and the gender revolution theory serve as the point of departure. Considering labor market changes as the main drivers of family and gender role changes, the chapter focuses on the development from the male breadwinner-female homemaker model to families with women as secondary earners, to dual-career families, and more recently to the female primary earner or breadwinner-mother model, along with the slow and delayed transition of the male gender role from primary family provider to involved, caring men and the new father. The review demonstrates gender role changes being closely intertwined with the de-standardization of family biographies leading to a growing diversity of relationships over the life course as well as increasingly complex family compositions and household structures. Every stage of the family life course relates to a range of options, starting with partnership formation (cohabitation, marriage, LAT) if at all, through becoming a parent (when, how many times, in which family type, biological or stepparent) or not, to partnership dissolution (divorce/separation) and family reconstitution, shaping and shaped by altering gender roles. Diverse policy and cultural contexts (norms, values, attitudes, perceptions – and multiethnic families) facilitate or hinder family and gender-role transitions, impinging societal development.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support to Livia Sz. Oláh from Stockholm University, the research program Ageing well – individuals, families and households under changing demographic regimes in Sweden from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare (FORTE), grant number 2016-07115, is gratefully acknowledged. Daniele Vignoli and Irena E. Kotowska received no specific funding for this work.

Authors’ contributions: All authors contributed to the study conception and design, to material collection, and to prepare drafts for specific sections of the text. Based on these, the first draft of the manuscript was compiled by Livia Sz. Oláh, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Responsible Section Editor: Prof. Dr Nick Drydakis

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Livia Sz. Oláh

  2. Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Daniele Vignoli

  3. Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Irena E. Kotowska

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  1. Livia Sz. Oláh
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  2. Daniele Vignoli
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  3. Irena E. Kotowska
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Correspondence to Livia Sz. Oláh .

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  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

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  1. School of Economics and International Business, Centre for Pluralist Economics, Faculty of Business and Law, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  2. University of Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  3. Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Nick Drydakis

  4. Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany

    Nick Drydakis

  5. Global Labor Organization, Essen, Germany

    Nick Drydakis

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Oláh, L.S., Vignoli, D., Kotowska, I.E. (2021). Gender Roles and Families. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_23-1

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