Family and Gender Roles: How Attitudes Are Changing

This paper addresses two main issues. The first concerns how attitudes towards marriage, motherhood, and the morality of family behaviours differs across nations, both in Europe and in the United States. I explore whether attitudes are converging over time; and to what extent there are generational differences regarding family values. I also explore the possibility that there may have been pronounced value shifts about some aspects of family life, while other values show greater continuity. The second part of the paper looks more specifically at changing gender roles. In particular, I briefly present some of the research that is being conducted as part of the ESRC Research Network on Gender Inequalities in Production and Reproduction (GeNet) to examine why gender roles in general and, more specifically, gender inequalities in domestic labour are so hard to change. Individualisation and Family Values It has been claimed that the family as an institution has become individualized i