The Long Arm of Socialization: How Past Societal Contexts Shape Mothers’ Preferences and Employment Outcomes

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Families and Inequality

Abstract

Cross-national differences in motherhood penalties are typically attributed to institutional and normative conditions at the time of childbirth. Yet causal studies of policy reforms often find only modest short-term effects. We propose a framework that distinguishes between the influence of past and contemporaneous societal contexts on both maternal employment preferences and outcomes, and theorize when each matters more. Using East-to-West migration after German reunification, we examine women socialized under East Germany’s gender-egalitarian regime who later became mothers in the more traditional West. Drawing on 1991–2019 SOEP data, we follow mothers for up to 15 years after childbirth and assess not only their employment behavior but also their stated preferences and their partners’ socialization background. We find that East-West movers retain the stronger employment preferences and higher employment rates typical of East German mothers—especially when partnered with East German men—while their preferences for work hours gradually adapt to the West German part-time model. The West German context does not significantly restrict movers from meeting their preferences. These findings show that early-life socialization shapes persistent employment preferences, while contemporaneous contexts influence more flexible dimensions, offering new insight into why institutional reforms may have limited immediate effects on maternal employment.

Author

• Malte Reichelt, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg