The relationship between mothers' and daughters' sex-role attitudes and self-concepts in three types of family environments

The major purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between mothers' and daughters' sex-role attitudes regarding marriage, children, and careers, and to determine the relationship between their self-concepts. A second purpose of the study was to compare groups of mothers and groups of daughters on these four variables. The sample was composed of 25 traditional mother-daughter dyads from homes where the mother was a full-time homemaker; 25 dual-work dyads from homes where the n mother was employed primarily because of economic necessity; and 25 dual-career dyads from homes where the mother had an advanced degree, was career oriented, and worked mainly because of personal fulfillment.

Data were collected concerning self-concept and the attitudinal variables of marriage, children, and careers by using the following instruments: the Attitudes Toward Women Scale, the Sex-Role Orientation Scale, and the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale. A Personal History Inventory was used to gather socio-demographic data regarding the family.

Pearson product-moment correlation was used to measure relationships of mothers' and daughters' attitudes and selfconcepts, and multivariate analysis of variance was used to

compare both attitude and self-concept scores of groups. Attitudes toward marriage and careers were significantly related within all three groups of mothers and daughters. Attitudes toward children and self-concept scores were significantly related only between the dual-work dyads. Dualcareer mothers differed significantly from traditional mothers regarding all three attitudinal variables. They differed from dual-work mothers concerning the variables of marriage and children. Dual-work mothers did not differ significantly from traditional mothers on any of the three sex-role variables. There was no difference in self-concept scores for any of the three groups of mothers or daughters. Daughters of dualcareer mothers also had significantly different attitudes toward all three variables from those of daughters of traditional mothers. Daughters in dual-work families did not differ in sex-role attitudes from daughters in traditional families, nor did they differ from dual-career daughters regarding attitudes toward children. All statistical analyses were conducted at the .05 level of significance.

Major contributions of the study were the following:

1. When comparing working versus nonworking women, it is important to differentiate women who work outside the home according to the reason why they work. Outside employment alone does not necessarily indicate that women have different attitudes from those of women who are full-time homemakers.

2. Mothers' and daughters' attitudes regarding sexroles are related. The mother does serve as a significant other to her daughter regarding attitude formation. This relationship may be bidirectional, also.