Abstract
The authors examined double standards regarding divorce among parents
with young children and regarding having children within nonmarital
cohabitation across Europe. Whether people disapprove more of men or of
women engaging in these behaviors is not a priori clear. The authors
formulated arguments in both directions and expected double standards to
vary cross-nationally by the level of socioeconomic gender equality in a
country. They conducted multilevel analyses on a sample of about 44,000
individuals nested in 25 countries, obtained from the European Social
Survey (2006). Double standards were measured with a split-ballot
design. The findings indicated that men were generally more disapproved
of than women when displaying the family behaviors under study. Overall,
women endorsed both double standards, whereas men endorsed only the
double standard regarding divorce. However, substantial cross-national
differences in the double standards exist. The higher the level of
socioeconomic gender equality, the larger these double standards in
favor of women.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1097-1113 |
Journal | Journal of Marriage and Family |
Volume | 78 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Keywords
- SSCI