The Wages of Parenthood: At the Intersection of Gender, Child Caregiving, and Sexual Orientation Open Access

Abstract

Despite advances made by women in the workplace, mothers have continued to be penalized with regard to job attainment, advancement, and pay. The goal of this project is to disentangle the various aspects at work in this penalty for working mothers by experimentally manipulating characteristics that are contributing to lower expectations for working mothers. For the experiment, I created a vignette where all information presented is identical aside from the manipulated conditions of gender, child caregiving condition, and sexual orientation of fictitious job seekers. After reading this vignette, respondents were asked a series of questions about how they would evaluate the candidate. Results indicate that, among heterosexual parents, primary caregiving parents (both male and female) are evaluated more harshly than secondary caregiving parents. Results also indicate that lesbian secondary caregiving mothers are evaluated more harshly than heterosexual secondary caregiving mothers. A full review of these findings and a discussion of the implications are included.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, AND LITERATURE REVIEW 1

EXPECTATION STATES THEORY 4

GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD AS DIFFUSE STATUS CHARACTERISTICS 7

CAREGIVING POSITION AS A DIFFUSE STATUS CHARACTERISTIC 10 SEXUAL ORIENTATION AS A DIFFUSE STATUS CHARACTERISTIC 15

THE RELATION BETWEEN RESPONDENT ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT GENDER, CAREGIVING POSITION, AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION 16

CHAPTER II: DATA AND METHODS 23

DESIGN OVERVIEW 23

PROCEDURES AND DATA 26

THE VIGNETTES 27

The Cover Story 28

Caregiving Position Not Indicated 29

Caregiving Position Primary 30

Caregiving Position Secondary 30

SURVEY MEASURES 31

Variables 31

ANALYSIS 36

CHAPTER III: RESULTS 37

MAIN EFFECTS 38

EXPERIMENTAL CONDITION INTERACTIONS AND COMPARISONS 41

MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS 45

CHAPTER IV: DISCUSSION 49

I: WHY ARE THERE LIMITED MAIN EFFECTS? 51

II: HIDDEN BINDS AND FREEDOMS IN CONTINGENT EFFECTS 57

III: LIMITATIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 64

TABLES 67

REFERENCES 75

APPENDIX 1: THE VIGNETTES AND SURVEY 83

APPENDIX 2: CORRELATION MATRIX 89

APPENDIX 3: COMPOSITE VARIABLE ANALYSIS 90

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Sociology
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Social Sociology, General
Keyword	gender sexual orientation caregiving work penalty
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Browne, Irene, Emory University Hegtvedt, Karen A, Emory University
Committee Members	Johnson, Cathryn, Emory University Pascoe, CJ, University of Oregon Williams, Melissa, Emory University

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