Gender roles and values of children: Childless couples in East and West Germany

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DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

VOLUME 19 ARTICLE 39, PAGES 1451-1500
PUBLISHED 22 AUGUST 2008
http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol19/39/

Research Article

Gender roles and values of children:
Childless couples in East and West Germany

Ursula Henz

© 2008 Henz.

This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution NonCommercial License 2.0 Germany, which permits use,
reproduction & distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes,
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See http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/de/

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Table of Contents
1
Introduction
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2
Theoretical background
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2.1
Gendered division of household work and fertility
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2.2
Values of children
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3
The case of Germany
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3.1
Family and fertility policies in the German Democratic
1456
Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
3.2
Gender division of household work
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3.3
Values of children
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3.4
Attitudes to women’s employment
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3.5
Summary
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4
Data and methods
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4.1
Sample
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4.2
Core variables
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4.2.1
Values of children
1465
4.2.2
Household work
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4.2.3
Attitudes to women’s employment
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4.3
Methods and models
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5
Results
1471
5.1
Confirmatory factor analysis of the values of children
1471
5.2
Variations in the values of children between East and West-
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German women and men
5.3
Having a first child in West Germany
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6
Summary and discussion
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7
Acknowledgements
1487




Bibliography
1488




Appendix
1496

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Demographic Research: Volume 19, Article 39
research article
Gender roles and values of children:
Childless couples in East and West Germany
Ursula Henz1
Abstract
Presuming that not just economic circumstances but also ideational factors influence
fertility decisions, the paper examines the values of children of East and West-German
childless men and women living with a partner. Based on the survey about ‘Change and
Development of Family Life Forms’, a confirmatory factor analysis identifies an
affective, a utility and a cost dimension of the values of children, and for West-German
women an additional dimension of opportunity costs. Although East and West-German
men and women differed in their values of children, hypotheses about the higher
affective value of children for East Germans compared to West Germans or for women
compared to men are not supported for the specific sample. The values of children
varied with respondent’s labour-market position and the division of household work.
An analysis of panel data for West Germany shows that first-birth rates depended on the
values of children especially of women and on the gender roles in the home. Couples
that practised a patriarchal division of labour had a relatively high first-birth rate
whereas less traditional couples’ behaviour was more varied depending on their
affective value of children.


1 London School of Economics, United Kingdom. E-mail: U.Henz@lse.ac.uk.
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Henz: Gender Roles and Values of Children
1. Introduction
A popular explanation of current fertility trends in Western societies is the neoclassical
economic theory (Becker 1981), which assumes that it is economically advantageous
for spouses to specialize in market and in family work, respectively. As women’s level
of employment has risen during the last decades, women’s increasing income has raised
the opportunity costs of having children, lowering the presumed advantage of
specialization. While these changes explain the drop in fertility in many Western
countries, they do not fully account for the differences in fertility levels between these
countries (Friedman et al. 1994). Recent research on the low levels of fertility in
Western societies has suggested that not just the division of market work between the
spouses but also the division of household work are key to their explanation (McDonald
2000a, 2000b; Oláh 2003; Cooke 2004; Torr and Short 2004; de Laat and Sevilla Sanz
2007). The main argument is that women find it difficult to combine work and family if
the household work is divided in the traditional way between the spouses. As a
consequence women are reluctant to have children especially if they pursue a career. A
more egalitarian setting should be associated with fewer stressors and higher fertility
rates.
The other major explanation of current fertility trends emphasizes the importance
of ideational and cultural factors as part of the theory of the ‘Second Demographic
Transition’ (van de Kaa 1987; Lesthaeghe 1995). According to this approach, the drop
in fertility in Western societies was related to a change in the role and structure of the
family in the context of rising postmaterialist values of self-expression and quality of
life. This change might have progressed differently in different societal groups. In
contrast, Becker’s neoclassical economic theory presumes that all people have the same
preferences about children. If one assumes that some couples are more eager for the
woman to have a career than others, and that some couples have a more positive attitude
to children than others, one can distinguish three situations: (a) The couple values
children highly and wants the woman to be in paid work: these couples should profit
from equality in the societal institutions and in the home when pursuing their fertility
goals. (b) The couple does not especially value the woman’s involvement in paid work
but still holds positive values of children. These couples’ intentions are compatible with
a more traditional male breadwinner model. (c) The couple does not hold positive
values of children. For these couples one would expect no relationship between gender
equality and fertility. To test these scenarios it is necessary to consider in fertility
models attitudes to children and to women’s careers and the anticipated gender division
of household work.
People’s attitudes partly reflect the current societal conditions and partly earlier
individual experiences through which they were formed (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975).
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Demographic Research: Volume 19, Article 39
Therefore, considering attitudes means not only taking subjective aspects into account
but indirectly also past experiences. A possible problem of the analytic strategy is that
the attitudes to children, to women’s participation in paid work, and the gender division
of household work are dependent on each other. For example, the expectations about
labour-market participation and childbirth could influence (the choice of spouse and)
the gender division of work in the home. Similarly, the attitudes to children could result
from career ambitions and the gender division of household work. In the first part of my
analyses I will explore whether the values of children are related to the other two
indicators in East and West Germany. Studying the two parts of Germany is a unique
opportunity to compare two countries where the socio-legal framework for families and
working lives have been quickly aligned after 1989 but where past experiences and,
therefore, attitudes might differ strongly. I use data from the survey about ‘Change and
Development of Family Life Forms’ (Familiensurvey, FS) (Deutsches Jugendinstitut
2004), which provides representative samples of the East and West-German populations
aged 18 to 55 in 1988 (West only), 1990-1 (East only), 1994 and 2000 (both East and
West). The final analyses assess the importance of gender roles in the home and
attitudes to children for first births in West Germany, using the West-German panel
waves from 1988, 1994, and 2000. The main hypothesis is that both traditional couples
and couples with positive values of children and a relatively equal gender division of
household work have a high propensity of having children.


2. Theoretical background
2.1 Gendered division of household work and fertility
According to McDonald (2000a, 2000b), the male breadwinner model has changed in
Western societies towards a gender-equity model especially in institutions of education
and market employment, opening up considerable opportunities to women outside the
role of mother. As a consequence, young women have increasingly pursued a career
and childbearing ages have risen. McDonald has argued that if family-oriented
institutions have adapted to this new behaviour, fertility rates could remain relatively
high, but that in countries where attitudes and family-oriented institutions have
remained closer to the male breadwinner model it has been more difficult to combine
work and family, resulting in lower levels of fertility. His description is in line with the
observed relationship between men’s involvement in household tasks and fertility levels
in industrialized countries: from their literature review, de Laat and Sevilla Sanz
(2004:8) concluded that ‘relatively high fertility and high female labor force
participation countries are characterized by families favoring a more balanced division
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Henz: Gender Roles and Values of Children
of housework in which women take on a smaller share of housework’. De Laat and
Sevilla Sanz (2004) argue that more children require more household work, and that in
egalitarian countries it is easier for men to contribute substantially more to the
household work than in less egalitarian countries because it is associated with less
social stigma. As a result, men do more household work and thus the couples can afford
to have more children even if the woman is working. Turning from the country level to
the household level, egalitarian families should still have fewer children than traditional
families in the same country because neither spouse values doing household work. De
Laat and Sevilla Sanz (2004) find support for these hypotheses in their analysis.
A further elaboration of these ideas by Torr and Short (2004) consisted of
introducing ‘gender ideology’ as a mediating factor between household work and
fertility: not housework division per se but its evaluation as fair or unfair should be
related to fertility. This elaboration suggests a U-shaped pattern between man’s share of
household work and fertility. In their analysis of US transitions to a second child they
found that both couples with an equal division of household work and couples with an
extremely unequal division of household work had high fertility rates. However, gender
ideology did not exert an independent effect on fertility.


2.2 Values of children
One of the weaknesses of the neoclassical economic theory is the assumption that
people’s attitudes to children are the same for men and women in all situations and
circumstances (Nauck 2000). The social-psychological ‘value-of-children-approach’
offers a suitable framework to incorporate such differences. Originally developed by
Hoffman and Hoffman (1973), it formulates a set of economic, normative and
psychological categories that are thought to influence people’s fertility behaviour.2
Hoffman and Hoffman’s values-of-children concept is part of a broader model of
fertility that also takes alternatives into account that produce the same values for
(potential) parents, the direct and indirect costs of having children, as well as the

2 Hoffman and Hoffman (1973) give the potential values of children as: children give primary group ties and
affiliation to the parent; they can be stimulating and fun; children can be an expansion of the self; they help
form an adult status and social identity; they provide a sense of achievement and creativity; childbearing is
often seen as a moral act; they can be an economic utility; they can give parents power in their society;
parents might gain a sense of creativity and accomplishment from rearing children; and parents can get a
competitive advantage from having children.
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Demographic Research: Volume 19, Article 39
barriers and incentives for having them. The approach has been applied in a number of
studies (Arnold 1975; Hoffman and Manis 1979; Fawcett 1988).
In an attempt to clarify the theoretical foundations of the value-of-children
approach, Nauck has recently integrated it into the general theory of social production
functions (Nauck 2005, 2007). In this context it tries to explain ‘how and under which
conditions children become intermediate goods in their (potential) parents’ social
production function by optimizing their social esteem and physical well-being’ (Nauck
2005:186). Nauck derived a four-dimensional utility function of children: their labour
utility in contributing to the household production or the household income; their
insurance utility against life’s eventualities; their status-attainment utility by creating
new relations, changing existing ones, or directly affecting parents’ status; and their
emotional utility through creating intimate life-long bonds. The labour and insurance
utilities might be of comparatively little importance in Western welfare states but some
aspects of the insurance utility are actually part of many instruments for measuring the
values of children.
In his version of the value-of-children approach, Nauck is mostly concerned with
the value of children for their parents without focusing on differences between mothers
and fathers. Much of his work actually only addresses women’s values of children
(Nauck 2007; Nauck and Klaus 2007). However, the model allows for an elaboration of
differences between men’s and women’s values of children if one assumes that men and
women maximize their social esteem and physical well-being in different ways. Nauck
suggests that especially for mothers, children can improve social integration and
thereby heighten their social esteem (Nauck 2005:187). Nauck also spells out the
contribution of parenthood to self-validation and personal identity formation, giving
meaning and relevance to personality (Nauck 2005:187). Although this applies to both
men and women, one could argue that women as primary caretakers and nurturers of
children profit more from parenthood than men whose identities are, in contrast, more
focused on paid work and the provider role. However, if suggestions by Friedman and
her co-authors (1994) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) about a child as a major
source of stability in life are correct, children could become increasingly important for
both men’s and women’s identity. In terms of costs, children can threaten the social
esteem and physical well-being that is gained from individual leisure time or from
women having a career, and because family and children are still predominantly the
domain of women, women might be more affected than men.

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Henz: Gender Roles and Values of Children
3. The case of Germany
3.1 Family and fertility policies in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and
the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
East and West Germany are interesting cases for a comparative study because of their
specific mixture of similarities and differences in the conduct of private life (Schneider
1994; Schneider et al. 1995). One of the most striking differences between the two parts
of Germany refers to women’s employment. In West Germany, tax regulations strongly
support the male breadwinner model. The majority of women interrupt employment at
childbirth. While older generations of women never returned to the labour market,
younger generations increasingly go back to work, and the times outside the labour
market have got shorter. Since 1986 parents can stay at home with their child for up to
three years while keeping the right to the job and getting a flat rate benefit for up to 18
months, which is means tested for part of the time.3 Public childcare offers mainly part-
time places for three to six year olds. It reached nearly full coverage in the 1990s. Time
in school is usually limited to half days.
In the former GDR women fully participated in the labour market. After a new
policy was established in the 1970s women were allowed to take an employment break
after childbirth. Since 1986 women could stay at home for up to one year after
childbirth while retaining 70-90 per cent of their salary (Trappe 1995). The normative
model of combining full-time work and parenthood was supported by a bundle of social
and family benefits, e.g. shorter working hours, access to housing, and low-cost public
childcare. Thereby the state took over a large part of the time and financial costs of
bringing up children (Schneider et al. 1995).
Since reunification, both parts of Germany have been governed by the same laws
and social security system although some provisions were paid at a lower level in East
Germany. The high level of kindergarten provision in East Germany was cut
substantially after re-unification but because of the drop in fertility and possibly also a
drop in demand of parents, day care for children was still readily available in Eastern
Germany (Hank and Kreyenfeld 2003). West Germany continued expanding
kindergartens at a slow pace. Both parts of Germany experienced increasing levels of
unemployment with higher levels in East Germany.

3 These parental-leave regulations applied to the early 1990s. In 2007 a major policy reform has introduced a
new parental allowance (‘Elterngeld’), which pays fathers or mothers a share of their last income for up to 14
months.
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Demographic Research: Volume 19, Article 39
Regarding family development, both parts of Germany have followed a special
path in a European context (Schneider et al. 1995). West Germany experienced a
polarization of living arrangements into a declining family/child oriented sector and a
pluralized childless sector that is oriented towards employment (Höhn and Dorbritz
1995; Strohmeier 1995; Strohmeier and Schulze 1995; Federkeil 1997). The
family/child oriented sector consisted mostly of married couples with children, a
majority of which followed the classic male breadwinner model. Smaller groups were
formed by single mothers and even less common living arrangements with children.
The childless sector consisted of married couples without children and employed or not
employed women, unmarried couples, and singles. The notion of a polarization of
living arrangements is not only based on the increasing non-child sector but is also
expressed in the increasing number of children among married couples (Höhn and
Dorbritz 1995).4 This contrasts with the GDR where living with children remained the
normal life style although the family size decreased. Insofar living arrangements reflect
family preferences one would expect more homogenous attitudes to children among
East Germans and more variation among West Germans. Despite the differences
between the former GDR and the former FRG, having a child was more consequential
for women’s careers than for men’s in both countries because in both countries most
women assumed the primary responsibility for bringing up children.
Figure 1 depicts the total fertility rates in the two parts of Germany. It shows the
increase of the fertility rate in the GDR following the policy reforms of the early 1970s
and the collapse of GDR birth rates after re-unification. The drop in East-German
fertility levels was partly due to a change in the East-German states towards higher ages
at first birth (Witte and Wagner 1995; Conrad et al. 1996; Kreyenfeld 2003). The most
prominent explanation for the fertility decline in East Germany, however, has been the
difficulty of combining family and employment under the new Western system
(Schneider et al. 1995). This was not only because women’s access to employment and
their chances for occupational upward mobility weakened after the German re-
unification compared to men’s, but also because of cuts or insufficient adaptation of
infrastructure that aimed at facilitating to combine family and employment. These
changes meant that the responsibility for bringing up children was handed back to
women (Schneider et al. 1995:9).

4 Höhn and Dorbritz (1995) saw the continuing strength of the institution of marriage in West Germany as the
key factor for the polarization process, providing a secure living arrangement for women and children. The
strong support of the state for marriages made other living arrangements with children less desirable, and
made the consequences of divorce more serious.
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Henz: Gender Roles and Values of Children
Figure 1:
Total fertility rates in East and West Germany
3.00
2.50
2.00
West
1.50
East
1.00
0.50
0.00
0
55
0
5
0
75
80
5
0
5
00
5
195
19
196
196
197
19
19
198
199
199
20
200


Source: Statistisches Bundesamt 2007


3.2 Gender division of household work
The majority of both East and West-German couples followed a traditional division of
household work (Keddi and Seidenspinner 1991; Dannenbeck et al. 1995). Analyses of
the 1988 FS for West Germany have shown that shopping for the household, cleaning,
cooking, childcare, contact with teachers and eldercare were predominantly female
activities whereas men were responsible for small repairs in the household and
decorating the apartment or house (Keddi and Seidenspinner 1991). Both partners
played about equally often with children, kept social contacts, looked after finances and
dealt with authorities. Women spent on average considerably more hours doing
household work.
In the GDR, women also had the primary responsibility for the family (Strohmeier
and Schulze 1995). Men carried out about one quarter of household tasks with younger
men doing more (Bertram 1995). Using FS data from 1988 and 1990, Dannenbeck and
his co-authors (1995) found very similar patterns in East and West Germany in terms of
the hours of household work. There were small differences regarding who carried out
the different household tasks. In the Eastern states there was a somewhat higher
tendency to carry out tasks together or to take turns, which the authors explained with
the shortage of convenience goods in the planned economy of the GDR at the same
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