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Women’s Lifestyle Preferences in the 21st Century: Implications for Family Policy

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The Future of Motherhood in Western Societies

Abstract

Recent social and economic changes focused attention first on promoting women’s employment, and now on reversing declining fertility. Preference theory helps us to understand women’s choices between paid jobs and family work, and provides an empirical basis for social and family policy. It predicts continuing sex differences in lifestyle and life goals, and increasing diversity in life patterns for men and women. In contrast, feminism insists that all sex differences can and should be eliminated, so that diversity will vanish. Social scientists are now giving more attention, and weight, to (unpaid) reproductive work and household work, bringing them into the policy limelight. Policy-makers are also confirming the economic and social importance of population growth, and hence the necessity for active population policies. Judging by results, the two policies that appear to have the greatest potential for encouraging women to achieve their ideal family size are raising family allowances to reduce the cost of children, and the homecare allowance which pays one parent a salary for full-time childcare. Both have proved successful and effective in Europe. Overall, social policy must recognise female diversity, and support it with diversified policies that support all groups of women. To date, careerist women have been given greater support than family-centred women who tend to have the largest families.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Studies of contraceptive practice using the old methods show that they left women feeling helpless, not in control, and fatalistic (Fischer, 2000). It is modern contraception that gives women personal and independent control of their fertility and thus produces a change of perspective, even a psychological change, creating a sense of autonomy and personal freedom (Hakim, 2000, p. 45). It is this change that starts to make lifestyle choices meaningful for women. Modern contraception eliminates the “contingency” orientation over women’s life course and empowers women (Presser, 2001, p. 178).

  2. 2.

    Countries that switch to individualised taxation implicitly withdraw fiscal support for marriage and the full-time homemaker spouse – as illustrated by Sweden and Britain. In addition, the role of housewife or homemaker has lost status. In the past, it had the same status as a secretary, one of the most common female occupations, falling roughly in the middle of the occupational prestige scale (Hakim, 2004, Table 2.7). Today, unpaid household work seems to have less status than a paid job.

  3. 3.

    Tsui (2001) quotes a United Nations study summarising contraceptive patterns in 57 developing countries: 58% of married women of reproductive age used some form of contraception, and this was almost invariably modern methods, mainly sterilization, the oral pill and IUDs (United Nations, 1996, Table 15). Some fast-moving Asian countries, such as Singapore, have already switched family policy to a pronatalist position.

  4. 4.

    This is the most common problem with critics’ attempts to falsify preference theory: their tests have been obliged to utilise data on societal norms (rather than personal preferences) and thus find weak linkages with behaviour (Hakim, 2007a).

  5. 5.

    The study also confirmed that Britain differs from other European countries, as Hakim has argued.

  6. 6.

    For example in Britain, it is recognised that 30 years after the creation of the Equal Opportunities Commission and introduction of sex equality legislation, the social, economic and legal situation of women had been transformed dramatically, with sex discrimination no longer the main problem in explaining the pay gap, for example (Watson, 2005; Women and Work Commission, 2006). The emphasis switched instead to the question of work-life balance, which affects everyone, and has serious consequences, as reflected in declining fertility rates across Europe.

  7. 7.

    Such valuations had been produced previously by academics (Thomas, 1992, pp. 21–26). The publication of official statistics on the topic represented a major investment in research and reflected a major change of political perspective.

  8. 8.

    Feminists reject any division of labour in the family as sexist and disadvantageous to women. However economists have pointed out that even a minor (female) advantage in childrearing, or a minor (male) advantage in earnings, would lead to a rational division of labour in the family (Becker, 1991; Ermisch, 2003).

  9. 9.

    The pay gap between men and women has effectively disappeared, replaced by what is called the “family gap”: an average earnings differential between childless women and women with children (Waldfogel, 1993).

  10. 10.

    One exception to this might be Murray’s proposal for a standard Guaranteed Minimum Income for all combined with the elimination of all welfare state benefits and attached administrative costs (Murray, 2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology Department, London School of Economics, London, UK

    Catherine Hakim (Senior Research Fellow)

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  1. Catherine Hakim
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Correspondence to Catherine Hakim .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Demographic Institute (NIDI), Netherlands Interdisciplinary, s-Gravenhage, Netherlands

    Gijs Beets

  2. Utrecht School of Economics, University of Utrecht, Vredenburg 138, Utrecht, 3511 BG, Netherlands

    Joop Schippers

  3. Abstederdijk 19, Utrecht, 3582 BL, Netherlands

    Egbert R. te Velde

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Hakim, C. (2011). Women’s Lifestyle Preferences in the 21st Century: Implications for Family Policy. In: Beets, G., Schippers, J., te Velde, E. (eds) The Future of Motherhood in Western Societies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8969-4_12

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