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The Division of Political Labor Between Mothers and Fathers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

M. Kent Jennings  and
Richard G. Niemi
M. Kent Jennings
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
Richard G. Niemi
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

This paper starts from the premise that traditional views of political roles among married couples emphasize role-differentiation, leading to masculine superiority; more recent perspectives stress role-sharing, leading to equality. The implications for individual political participation and political socialization vary according to the prevalence of and conditions surrounding the two patterns. Interview data from a national sample of middle-aged couples reveal substantial equality with respect to command over political resources, attention paid to politics, and manifest political participation. Levels of equality remain high under a variety of controls. When inequalities do exist, male dominance is more common, but the extent of that dominance varies across the range of political labor. Superiority of either parent in one arena tends to occur in others also, suggesting fixed modes of behavior. The relative advantage in education and personal efficacy which one partner holds over the other vitally affects the political advantage. These factors and mother's employment status operate more strongly among working class than middle class couples. Age of children has no appreciable impact. To achieve political parity or superiority mothers ordinarily need extraordinary resources to overcome the built-in constraints of culturally-defined sex roles.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 69 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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Footnotes

*

We express our thanks to the Danforth Foundation for supporting the collection of the data on which this paper is based, to the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health for support while the paper was written, and to George Moyser for bis assistance in the preparation of the article.

References

1 Zelditch, Morris, “Role Differentiation in the Nuclear Family,” in Parsons, Talcott, Bales, Robert F., et al., Family, Socialization, and Interaction Process (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1955), pp. 339–242Google Scholar.

2 Slater, Philip, “Parental Role Differentiation,” American Journal of Sociology, 67 (1961), 296–311 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Coser, Rose Laub, “Authority and Structural Ambivalence in the Middle-Class Family,” in Coser, Rose Laub (ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1964), pp. 374–383 Google Scholar. The most intensive study of labor division in the household is that by Blood, Robert O. and Wolfe, Donald M., Husbands and Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living (New York: The Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar. See also Komarovsky, Mirra, Blue Collar Marriage (Rev. Ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 For documentation see the references cited in Jennings, M. Kent and Thomas, Norman, “Men and Women in Party Elites: Social Roles and Political Resources,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (1968), 469–492, at pp. 469–470 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Greenstein, Fred I, Children and Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), Chap. 6Google Scholar.

5 This is not to be confused with recent findings pointing toward maternal equality in terms of whether offspring take on the political coloration of mothers or fathers under conditions of mother-father disagreement. See Jennings, M. Kent and Langton, Kenneth P., “Mothers vs. Fathers: The Formation of Political Orientations Among Young Americans” Journal of Politics, 31 (1969), 329–358 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Level of difficulty was ordered into five categories: magazines, newspapers, television, radio, no media at all. Although some error may be involved in placing magazines above newspapers on the difficulty dimension, analysis of media habits suggests that more elite strata in the population do rely on magazines more than newspapers, at least with respect to news and analytic magazines. See, e.g., Robinson, John P., Public Information About World Affairs (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, 1967)Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, Blau, Peter M. and Duncan, Otis Dudley, The American Occupational Structure (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1967), pp. 354–355 Google Scholar.

8 These figures are based on recall data gathered from the husbands and wives. Analysis of similar data indicates that this type of information is likely to be highly accurate. See Niemi, Richard G., “A Methodological Study of Political Socialization in the Family,” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1967)Google Scholar.

9 Research on nonpolitical values and marriage roles suggests little or no improvement in consensus over time. See Heiss, Jerrold (ed), Family Roles: An Anthology (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1968), pp. 155–156 Google Scholar for a short discussion and references to the literature.

10 Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard G., Families, Schools and Political Learning (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

11 Ibid.

12 The occupational status measure used here is that developed by Otis Dudley Duncan and reported in his “A Socioeconomic Index for All Occupations,” in Reiss, Albert J. Jr., et. al., Occupations and Social Status (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), pp. 109–138 Google Scholar. Marital compatibility was based on responses to the question: “Compared to other families you know, would you say that you and your (wife) (husband) get along extremely well, about average, or not so well?”

13 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960), pp. 485–487, 490–491 Google Scholar.

14 This measure is sensitive to the number of categories used in defining a particular variable. Therefore, for comparing across variables, as in Table 3 in the text, the measure may be defective (and another measure is provided). However, for detecting the variations in the relative advantage of one parent when controls are applied to the initial relationship, the net advantage score seems appropriate (since the number of categories remains constant). It is in this latter fashion that the scores are used extensively.

15 March, James G., “Husband-Wife Interaction Over Political Issues,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 17 (Winter 1953–1954), 461–470 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Families where the father is higher are different than for the reverse case. There is a modest positive correlation between occupational status and father superiority (.27), which is to say that the higher the occupational class the more likely will the father's education exceed that of his spouse's. Similarly there is a positive association between father advantage and the combined educational level of the spouses (.33). As the joint educational level rises, the father's educational edge also rises, a finding consistent with Census Bureau data and other social research as well. See Orden, Susan R. and Bradburn, Norman M., “Working Wives and Marriage Happiness,” American Journal of Sociology, 74 (01 1968), 392–407 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

17 In addition this is one point at which the class bias inherent in the design of our sample probably reduces the observed relationship. We will note below that overall social (occupational) class makes little difference on the relative politicization scores. But there are some strong interaction effects, with relative education and politicization more strongly related among working class than middle class couples (see below). Thus having more working class people (as in the population of parents of all 17 and 18 year olds) would probably have sharpened the effects of relative education.

18 Middle and working class terms are used a bit arbitrarily here. The Duncan socio-economic ratings of occupations were used to dichotomize the range of the husband's occupation so that approximately one-half of the sample would be in each category. This means that virtually all of the husbands classified as middle class envelop white collar occupations; a small precentage of husbands classified as working class would ordinarily be included in the middle or lower middle class under more conventional procedures.

19 One might suspect that while the mother's relative position does not vary as a function of her children's ages, her absolute scores do change in the expected direction. That is, the older the last child, the higher will be her absolute scores. Even this less demanding test, however, fails to be met.

20 This is a distinction used by Cain, Glen G., Married Women in the Labor Force: An Economic Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

21 Since the mother's education is more likely to exceed that of her spouse in the working class (see note 16), the increased relative politicization among labor market wives increases the correlation between the two relative measures.

22 See e.g., Orden and Bradburn, loc. cit.

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