Their mother's daughters? The intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in a world of changing roles

This study examines the intergenerational transmission of two gender attitudes (gender role ideology and work role identity). It draws on a life course perspective and panel data on mothers to assess the relationships between daughters' attitudes and (a) mothers' attitudes and employment experiences, as well as (b) the daughters' own life experiences. We find that mothers' gender role ideology in the 1950s was positively related to their daughters' gender role ideology as adults in 1988 and that social change over this 30-year period contributed to greater mother-daughter congruence in gender role ideology and work role identity by the 1980s. However, daughters' own status matters most in predicting their work role identity, suggesting the importance of both behavior and broad historical changes in moderating intergenerational transmission processes.