The Determinants of Spouses' Normative Preferences for Family Roles

This paper examines both the determinants of spouses' normative preferences for family roles and determinants of changes in these preferences over time. Both a static and a dynamic model are developed which hypothesize effects of background characteristics, socioeconomic factors and family life-cycle stages on three dimensions of normative preferences. The most significant background characteristics are found to be ethnic origin and education. The earnings of wives are shown to be related to less traditional preferences of both spouses. Moreover, the results indicate that spouses make rapid mutual adjustments, implying that each spouse is a strong socializing agent for the other. The most striking result is the failure of the husband's preferences to dominate the wife's, a finding which contradicts generalizations regarding husbands' presumed dominance in family role relations.