Premium
Change in Gender‐Ideology, 1977–1996:The Contributions of Intracohort Change and Population Turnover
Author(s) -
Brewster Karin L.,
Padavic Irene
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00477.x
Subject(s) - ideology , demography , population , demographic economics , social change , psychology , social psychology , sociology , political science , economics , politics , law
This paper addresses the processes underlying the dramatic shift in beliefs about women's work and family roles in the United States over the past two decades. Following Mason and Lu (1988), we posited this shift to be a function of actual change in individual opinions, as well as changes in population membership that result from births and deaths. Using pooled cross‐sections from the General Social Surveys (1977 to 1996), we found that although demographic processes and microlevel attitude change are both important in understanding attitude trends, the contribution of cohort succession is substantially greater now than in the period that Mason and Lu examined. Multivariate analyses show that (a) the sex difference in attitudes is greater among recent cohorts, and (b) the strong association between education and attitudes that characterized earlier cohorts is significantly weaker among cohorts born after 1945.