Poster #115 - Like Father Like Son? The Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Role Attitudes in China

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Intergenerational transmission is regarded as a key mechanism for the persistence of cultural ideas: “like father like son”. Gender role attitudes - perceptions about the social roles, rights, and responsibilities of both sexes – are reflections of cultural ideas. Socialization theory and cultural transmission theory regard the family as the major setting for enculturation (Bisin et al., 2001). Previous research has considered family influences on children's gender role attitudes (Feng et al., 2014; Qing, 2018). However, little research has investigated intergenerational transmission with a focus on three generations of participants. This study addresses this research gap and addresses the following research questions: What are the characteristics of gender role attitudes? How similar are they among three generations of a family?

This study will leverage data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a large-scale biennial longitudinal social survey representing 95% of the Chinese population. The 2014 and 2020 waves of the CFPS contained items on gender roles for participants aged above 15. Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews were used for participants who lived in the same household. This study reports the 2014-wave data and data from the 2020 wave will be analyzed soon after they are fully released. The latter will permit analyses of intra-individual changes in gender attitudes.

The analytic sample included 710 grandparents (G1), 920 parents (G2), and 560 children (G3). A gender role score was constructed based on responses to three questions (e.g., “Women should have at least one child”, See Table 1). Cronbach’s alphas were acceptable (α = .72, α = .66; and α = .65 for GI, G2 and G3, respectively). Questions were rated on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The mean score for the three questions was used to index gender role attitudes. A score of 1 indicates egalitarian attitudes while 5 indicates an extremely traditional gender role attitude.

Figure 1 presents the gender role score and the mean for each question by three generations. G1 and G2 females had relatively more traditional gender role attitudes than males in their generation, but G3 girls have the most egalitarian attitudes among both genders across all three generations. Notably, females and males in later cohorts display more egalitarian gender roles. Among questions, female and male participants across generations all have a relatively more egalitarian view on whether marrying well is more important than doing well for women.

Table 1 presents correlations of gender role scores between generations. It indicates that G3’s gender role significantly correlates with their parents’ (G2), and G2 father’s gender role significantly correlates with their parents’ (G1). There was no significant correlation between G3 and G1, suggesting stronger gender role transmission from parent to the child than from grandparent to grandchild.

We will utilize data from CFPS 2020 to further probe changes in gender roles over 6 years and to better understand gender role transformations across generations. Further, we will examine the associations of age, education, socio-economic status, and place of residence in gender role scores.

Authors

• Hechunzi Wang, University of Hong Kong (HKU)
  Presenting Author

• Shuyang Dong, University of Hong Kong (HKU)