From Black-and-White to Shades-of-Grey: Toward a New Paradigm of Gender Role Ideologies in Motherhood

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Gender Roles and Ideologies

Abstract

Gender role ideologies are often measured through a blunt traditional–egalitarian dichotomy. This paper argues that the transition to first-time motherhood exposes why that binary is analytically insufficient: women’s gendered expectations are frequently conditional (varying by the child’s age) and domain-specific (differing across childcare and housework). Using a two-wave survey of first-time mothers in Lithuania (N = 59), administered during pregnancy and again after childbirth, I examine how childcare attitudes shift across three child-age stages (infants, toddlers, and children aged 4+), whether breastfeeding is associated with expectations of maternal primacy in infant care, and how the practical division of childcare and housework relates to women’s satisfaction.

Findings show that attitudinal change from pregnancy to early motherhood is concentrated in beliefs about infant care, with substantially weaker shifts for toddlers and minimal change for children aged 4+. Breastfeeding is associated with greater endorsement of maternal primacy for infants, suggesting that embodied caregiving can shape what is perceived as appropriate involvement during the first year. At the same time, satisfaction is tightly linked to within-couple sharing: equal divisions of childcare and, especially, housework correspond to markedly higher satisfaction, while persistent housework asymmetry is most strongly associated with dissatisfaction.

Taken together, these patterns point to gender ideology in early motherhood as a configuration rather than a single position. Building on this insight, the paper advances a five-category typology—Traditional, Moderately Traditional, Ambivalent, Moderately Egalitarian, and Strongly Egalitarian—capturing common “shades-of-grey” combinations that are obscured by binary measures. The broader implication is a shift in how family sociology conceptualises and measures gender role ideologies during early motherhood.

Author

• Vilma Razauskiene, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences