BLEE_Racial Differences in Men Attitudes About Women Gender Roles

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Racial Differences in Men's Attitudes about Women's Gender Roles

Author(s): Kathleen M. Blee and Ann R. TickamyerReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 21-30Published by: National Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/353813 .

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KATHLEENM. BLEE AND ANN R. TICKAMYERUniversity of Kentucky

Racial Differences in Men's Attitudes AboutWomen's GenderRoles

This article investigates three aspects of malegender role development, using linked mother-sonfiles from the young men and mature women co-horts of the National Longitudinal Surveysfromthe mid-1960s to 1981. The three aspects are: (a)race differences between African American andWhite men's attitudes about women's genderroles, (b) changes in gender role attitudes acrosstime, and (c) maternal and life course influenceson gender role attitudes. Our findings indicatethat African American and White men differ intheir attitudes about women's gender roles, thatmen's beliefs change across time, and that indi-vidual status and life course processes influencethese attitudes of men. However, we do not findmaternal influence on adult sons' attitudes.The attitudes that men and women hold towardappropriategender roles have a significant influ-ence on many aspects of marital and family dy-namics. They also help to perpetuate gender-dif-ferentiated opportunities in employment, educa-tion, politics, and other areas. For women andgirls, a substantial body of literature has docu-mented the formation of gender role attitudes, the

Department of Sociology, 1515 Patterson Office Tower, Uni-versity of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027.Key Words: gender role attitudes, maternal influence, Nation-al Longitudinal Surveys, race differences.

transmission of attitudes across generations (espe-cially from their mothers), and the structuralfac-tors that modify existing attitudes and beliefs(Blee & Tickamyer, 1986; Boyd, 1989; Stevens& Boyd, 1980; Thornton, Alwin, & Camburn,1983). Far less research has examined the atti-tudes of men or boys, how these attitudes areformed and changed over time, and how mothersinfluence this development. Yet, it is clear that,both in the family and in the larger society, menas well as women participatein the definition andperpetuationof gender roles.Recent scholarship suggests that male attitudestoward gender roles are more complicated thanhas been commonly assumed. Rather than a sin-gle standardof masculinity to which all men andboys are taught to aspire, studies have document-ed a variety of masculinities that define manhooddifferently across racial, ethnic, class, sexual, andregional boundaries (Connell, 1993; Franklin,1994; Segal, 1993). Moreover, some evidencesuggests that men's attitudes toward femininegender roles also vary. The idea that women'sroles should be circumscribedby home and fami-ly may reflect only a narrow segment of White,middle-class, heterosexual men; other groups ofmen may accept wider or different roles forwomen (Messner, 1993).The present study examines male attitudes to-ward women's gender roles and the influence ofmaternal and life course factors on these attitudesby examining data from pairs of African Ameri-

Journalof Marriageand the Family 57 (February 1995): 21-30 21


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Journal of Marriage and the Family

can and White mothers and their sons over time.We first describe existing research on the forma-tion and nature of gender roles and race differ-ences in men's gender role attitudes.We then for-mulate hypotheses about the factors that shapemale gender role attitudes and test these with dataon over 500 mother-son pairs from the NationalLongitudinal Surveys (NLS) of Mature Womenand Young Men from 1967 to 1981. We take ad-vantage of the longitudinal nature of the NLSdata, which permits examination of maternal andlife course effects on the gender role attitudes ofAfrican American and White men during lateadolescence and early adulthood.

RACEDIFFERENCESMONGMENThe ways in which gender role attitudes areformed, and how they are modified over time bylife experience, may differ significantly acrossracial groups. Studies of women and girls havefound racial differences in the definition of appro-priate feminine gender roles, with African Ameri-can women and girls more likely than their Whitecounterparts to see paid employment as compati-ble with maternal and familial responsibilities(Collins, 1987, 1990; King, 1988; see also Her-ring & Wilson-Sadberry, 1993). Even the processthrough which mothers socialize daughters intogender roles attitudes is racially specific. The atti-tudes of White daughters are influenced signifi-cantly by their mothers' attitudes but not bymothers' employment history; for African Ameri-can daughters, it is maternal employment-butnot attitudes-that affect gender role attitudes(Blee & Tickamyer, 1986).The few studies of African American andWhite men's gender roles suggest that masculini-ty, too, may be formed and defined within racialcategories. Hunter and Davis (1992), for example,concluded that African American men do notequate masculinity with success, wealth, ambi-tion, and power, but rather with self-determinismand accountability. Research that has found thatWhite men are more likely than African Ameri-can men to see marriage as a necessary compo-nent of an adult masculine role also suggestsracially specific constructions of masculinity(Bulcroft & Bulcroft, 1993; South, 1993).Research on race differences in a broad rangeof attitudes toward masculine and feminine gen-der roles, however, has produced inconsistent re-sults. A number of studies found no difference ingender role attitudes between African American

and White men, or no greaterdifference betweenthe attitudes of African American men andwomen than between those of White men andwomen (Hershey, 1978; Welch & Sigelman,1989; Wilkie, 1993). Other studies (e.g.,Cazenave, 1983) have shown that African Ameri-can men hold liberal gender role attitudes, irre-spective of class background, age, or marital sta-tus. Still other research has found African Ameri-can men more conservative than White men,particularly on issues of women in politics andwomen's place in the family, although not on is-sues of women's employment (Kiecolt & Acock,1988; Ransford & Miller, 1983; see also Wilson,Tolson, Hinton, & Kieran, 1990).

Such contradictory findings may be due to themultidimensionalityof masculine gender roles andattitudes among African American men. Hunterand Davis (1992, p. 472) argued that AfricanAmerican manhood is constructed from the ten-sion between "family role expectations groundedin patriarchy and the comparatively egalitarianwork and family roles in Afro-American families"(see also Collins, 1990; Duneier, 1992). Attitudestoward women in the family and women in em-ployment may form an underlying dimension ofgender belief among White men, but be separabledimensions among African American men. Thus,African American men may hold more liberal atti-tudes thanWhite men aboutmarried women's em-ployment, but share similar or more conservativeattitudes toward household division of labor andwomen's role within the family.Typically, attitude scales about women's gen-der roles, constructed from primarily White sam-ples, combine items measuring attitudes towardwomen's employment with items measuring sup-port for a broader range of gender equity issues.But gender role attitudes may be more complexfor African Americans than for Whites. Thus,men's gender role attitudes need to be analyzedseparatelyby race, and the specific dimensions ofgender role attitudes must be clearly specified. Todate, however, there are no systematic or large-scale studies of racial variations in the acquisitionand nature of a range of gender role attitudes bymen and boys.

FORMATIONFGENDEROLESGender role attitudes, like other attitudes, areshaped by factors both in childhood and in adult-hood. Role theory (Weitzman, 1979) argues thatchildren model their attitudes and behaviors on

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Men's Attitudes About Women's Gender Roles

those of significant others; because women arethe primary figures for most children, this sug-gests that mothers will exert a significant influ-ence on the future attitudes of their children. Em-pirical studies tend to confirm this relationship.Data from a largely White three-generationsam-ple showed that mothers-more so than fathers-have a significant influence on the orientation ofboth sons and daughters toward values aboutwork, militarism, religion, familism, and politics(Acock, Barker, & Bengtson, 1982; Acock &Bengtson, 1978). The few limited sample studiesthat have focused on maternal influence onAfrican American sons have also suggested thatmothers are important socialization agents forAfrican American sons (Allen, 1981; Kandel,1971; Thornton, Chatters,Taylor, & Allen, 1990).Althoughthere is substantialsupportfor the im-portance of mothersas socializing agents for sons,it is less clear exactly how mothers shape the fu-ture attitudesof their sons. Tomeh's (1987) studyof college students found thatmothers' work expe-rience influences the gender attitudes of sons, but astudy by Tallichet and Willits (1986) found no ef-fect. The effect of maternalemployment may de-pend on when mothers' work is measured. PowellandSteelman(1982), using 1977 data from the Na-tional OpinionResearch Center (NORC), conclud-ed that maternal employment during a boy'spreschool years (but not subsequent maternalem-ployment) has an effect on the son's attitude to-ward employment for wives and mothers, control-ling for the son's own characteristics. They sug-gested that boys learn gender roles in earlychildhood and carrythese attitudes into adulthood.Kiecolt and Acock (1988), however, analyzedGeneral Social Survey (GSS) data from 1972 to1986 and found that it is the mother's employmentduring her son's adolescence, not during child-hood, that has an effect on his later gender atti-tudes.The only study to examine race differences inthe impact of maternalemployment on sons' atti-tudes suggested that the process of maternal influ-ence might be significantly different amongWhites and African Americans. Ransford andMiller (1983) used pooled data from four NORCsurveys conducted during the 1970s and foundthat mothers' employment during sons' childhoodor adolescence has a liberalizing effect on Whitesons. For African American sons, a workingmother increases gender conservatism on someitems and has little impact on other items. Thus,although it is clear that mothers' employment has

an influence on the attitudes of their sons, it lessclear how this influence might vary by race, class,or life course since none of these studies usedsamples that were broadly representative of raceand social class or that allowed examination ofthese factors over a substantial period of chil-dren's attitudinaldevelopment.Moreover, attitudes are not necessarily fixedin childhood. Thus it is important to understandthe relative contribution of background factors,including socialization by parents, and adult ex-periences in shaping attitudes. Results of studiesin this area are inconclusive. Glass, Bengtson, andDunham (1986) found that the effects of parentalattitudes (either mother or father, but not distin-guished from each other) on the attitudes of theiroffspring decrease over time, while structuralef-fects of children's own status increase with age.Starrels(1992), however, found a continuing, androbust,relationshipbetween children's values andopinions and those of their mothers. Unfortunate-ly, Starrels' sample, from the National Survey ofChildren, included only pre- and early-adolescentchildren, and the long-term effect of maternal atti-tudes could not be measured.The most comprehensive studies of back-ground versus life course effects are based ondata from three generations of Los Angeles resi-dents in 1971 and 1985 analyzed by Miller andGlass (1989) and Acock and Bengtson (1978,1980). Miller and Glass found that the extent ofchange or stability in gender role attitudes overthe life course and across generations varies inpart by historical period. The entry of large num-bers of White married women into the labor forceand rising divorce rates in the 1970s led to overallchanges in normative gender role attitudes, butthe effect was more pronounced among youngergenerations. Thus they concluded that neitherbackground (childhood) nor life course (adult)factors are necessarily more influential in shapingadult attitudes, but that parent-child attitudinalsimilarity or dissimilarity is also the result of con-textual factors. Acock and Bengtson (1978, 1980)found a maternal influence on the attitudes ofsons and daughters and a high congruence be-tween parents' and children's attitudes, irrespec-tive of changes in these attitudes over time andacross generations.Although these results are highly suggestive,the nature of the Los Angeles sample limits itsgeneralizability. The sample is representative ofWhite, economically stable families, is not aprobability sample, and has a very high attrition

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Journal of Marriage and the Familyrate (almost 40% from Wave 1 to Wave 2). In ad-dition, several of the studies using these data donot distinguish between mothers' and fathers' in-fluence on children's attitudes.In summary, these studies suggest that moth-ers may influence the gender role attitudes oftheir sons as well as those of their daughters,though it is unclear whether this effect operatesprimarily through a modeling of mothers' behav-ior or mothers' attitudes. Further, earlier researchindicates that there may be substantial differencesin the formation and characteristics of men's atti-tudes toward women's gender roles in this soci-ety, particularly along racial lines. We investigatethese possibilities in the analyses below.

HYPOTHESESBased on this literaturereview, we have formulat-ed a series of hypotheses to test the factors thatshape male attitudes toward women's genderroles. Hypothesis 1: Consistent with the conceptof multidimensional gender roles in the AfricanAmerican community, African American menwill be more liberal than White men on genderrole items that pertain to women's employment.In contrast, African American men will be moreconservative than White men on gender roleitems that pertain to issues other than employ-ment. Hypothesis 2: Attitudes of both AfricanAmerican and White men toward women's gen-der roles will become more liberal over time. Thisstudy spans a time period of increasing liberaliza-tion of gender role attitudes in the population as awhole. Moreover, life course events such as edu-cational attainment and marriage may promotemore liberal gender role attitudes among men.Hypothesis 3: Mothers' attitudes will influencethe gender role attitudes of sons. Consistent withthe research on mothers and daughters,we expectthe effect of maternal influence during a son'steenage years on his subsequent gender role atti-tudes to decline as the son ages. Hypothesis 4:There will be racial differences in the impact of amother's employment during her son's youth onhis later attitudes about women's gender roles.Since maternal employment was less commonduringthis period for White families, it will havea more liberalizing effect for White sons. On theother hand, for African American men, for whommaternal employment was normative, we expectless impact of mother's work history on her son'sgender role attitudes.

RESEARCH DESIGNData

We test these hypotheses with data from theyoung men and mature women cohorts of the Na-tional Longitudinal Surveys of the Labor MarketExperiences (NLS). The original NLS consist of aset of longitudinal prospective panel surveys forfour separate age-sex cohorts conducted by theCenter for Human Resources Research of OhioState University under contract from the U.S. De-partment of Labor. The young men cohort beganin 1966 with a sample of men 14 to 24 years oldand was completed in 1981. Mature women werefirst surveyed in 1967 when they were 30 to 44years old, with data collection continuing to thepresent. Each of the original cohorts is a multi-stage probability sample representing the nonin-stitutionalized civilian population of the UnitedStates.The unique attributes of the NLS make it ide-ally suited for this study. First, households pro-vide the original sampling frame and, in manycases, multiple respondents live in the samehousehold or are part of the same family. Thedata are organized to permit linkage and analysisof a large number of mother-son dyads (as well asother family relationships). Second, AfricanAmerican households are oversampled by a factorof 3 to 4 times that of other households, therebyproviding a rare source of data with sufficientnumbers of cases for reliable analysis of differ-ences between African Americans and Whites.Third, relatively low attrition rates facilitate lon-gitudinal analysis. Finally, the data include bothextensive sociodemographic and attitudinal items.The result is the only broadly representative na-tional data set that permits investigation of theseresearch issues.In this study we select samples using two cri-teria: (a) We included only young men with com-plete data for three points in time at 5-year inter-vals: 1971, 1976, and 1981. These three surveyyears have information on the young men's atti-tudes about women's gender roles and representdifferent stages of their life course. In 1971, thefirst year that gender role items are available, theyoung men were 19 to 29 years old, just enteringadult roles and responsibilities. By the final year,these men were 29 to 39 and were firmly estab-lished in adult family and employment roles. (b)We included only young men with mothers in themature women cohort. These data sets are linked

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to establish mother-son dyads for analysis. All in-formation on mothers comes from the 1967 Ma-ture Women Survey.The result of selecting cases with completedata meeting both criteria is a sample of 136African American and 381 White mother-son

pairs. This selection procedure creates certain bi-ases in the sample. The sons in this sample arenearly 2 years younger, and therefore somewhatless likely to be marriedor employed, than the en-tire sample of young men. The slightly youngerage of sons in the mother-son sample results invery small differences in initial values of sonscompared with all young men, which disappearfor both races by the final year of the study.Mothers also differ from the larger sample slight-ly. In particular,African American mothers havea year less education than all maturewomen, andWhite mothers are somewhat more likely to beemployed than the larger sample (44.9% com-pared with 41.6%). While this means that the twogroups are not exactly comparable, there is noreason to expect that this will have any particulareffect on these analyses. The NLS data provide aunique opportunity to study intergenerational in-fluences in a national longitudinal study with ahigh retention rate of respondents (Center forHuman Resource Research, 1990; Macke, 1982).

MeasuresSociodemographic information on mothers in1967 and sons in 1971, 1976, and 1981 includethe following variables: married, a dummy vari-able indicating currently married; employed, adummy variable indicating currently employed atleast parttime; education, years of educational at-tainment (achieved by 1967 for mothers and by1971 or 1976 for sons); and income, yearly annu-al household income from all sources.In addition there are two gender role scales. Thefirst is the three-item Working Wives Scale, mea-suringattitudes toward working wives. The advan-tages of this scale are that the three items load to-gether in factor analysis and it is available for allrespondentsin all years: mothers in 1967 and sonsin 1971, 1976, and 1981. This scale has a range ofscores from 3 (highly negative attitudes towardworking wives) to 15 (highly positive attitudes to-ward working wives). Each item has five possibleresponsesrangingfrom stronglydisagreeto strong-ly agree. The three items ask whether it is all rightfor a wife to work under various conditions (seeAppendix, Factor 2, Items 1-3). Chronbach's

alpha, the reliability coefficient for this scale,varies from .68 to .69 for all years and groups.The second scale, called the New Gender RoleScale, is composed of more diverse items first in-troduced into the young men's survey in 1981.Exploratory analysis in 1981, using separateAfrican American and White samples, showedthat both groups loaded highly on a set of fiveitems (Factor 1). Whites had a stronger secondfactor than African Americans and the items in-cluded in the second factor differed for each race.These results support our conjecture that Blacksand Whites have a different structure of genderrole attitudes. However, for purposes of this anal-ysis, we used the five high-loading items that rep-resent common components of gender role atti-tudes (Factor 1) to construct the New GenderRole Scale. Scores range from 5 (traditionalatti-tudes) to 25 (contemporary attitudes). Items askfor the respondent's degree of agreement or dis-agreement to the statements regarding men's andwomen's roles in work and family (see Appendix,Factor 1). Chronbach'salpha is .76.

AnalysisAll analyses are performed separately for AfricanAmerican and White young men to facilitatecomparisons across race and year. Additionally,we examine racial differences in gender role atti-tudes by testing race interactions for each inde-pendent variable. Exploratory analyses showedthat, in addition to bivariate race effects, there aresmall additive effects of race in the multivariateanalysis for both mothers and sons for all years.Table 1 provides descriptive information on back-ground characteristics and gender role scales forsons and their mothers by race and year; t testsshow significant race differences for each year.Table 2 regresses the Working Wives Scales forall 3 years and the New Gender Role Scale for1981 on sons' characteristics and mothers' em-ployment and gender role attitudes.

RESULTSThe descriptive results presented in Table 1 showmarked differences between African Americanand White young men and their mothers. The firsttwo columns report characteristics of the mothersin 1967 when their sons were ages 15 to 25.White women are much more likely to be mar-ried, less likely to be employed, and they havehigher levels of status attainment-education and

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Journal of Marriage and the FamilyTABLE 1. CHARACTERISTICSOF SONS AND THEIR MOTHERS BY RACE AND YEAR

Mothers 1967 Sons 1971 Sons 1976Black White Black White Black White

Sons 1981Black White

Married %) 69.9**** 91.3 36.0* 44.1 58.8**** 74.0 61.8*** 76.6Employed(%) 56.6** 44.9 75.0 77.4 80.9** 89.2 83.8* 90.8Education(Min years) 8.9**** 11.3 11.6**** 13.0 12.4**** 13.8 12.4**** 13.8(3.0) (2.5) (2.3) (2.0) (2.6) (2.4) (2.6) (2.4)Income (Min $) 4,274.1**** 10,306.7 3,930.6**** 5,451.2 10,391.7**** 14,193.4 23,670.8*** 27,549.7(3,214.5) (5,720.5) (3,164.0) (4,298.1) (7,492.9) (7,571.5) (9,575.1) (12,930.5)WorkingWivesScale (M) 10.5*** 9.7 11.5** 10.8 12.2** 11.6 12.9*** 12.3(2.9) (2.6) (2.7) (3.1) (2.5) (2.8) (1.9) (2.5)New GenderRoleScale (M) 16.7** 17.5(3.9) (4.0)

Son's age 15-25 19-29 24-34 29-39Note: Standarddeviations are shown in parentheses.ForBlacks,n = 136; forWhites,n = 381.*p < .10. **p < .05. **p < .01. ****p < .001. (Testof significance for differences betweenraces.)

household income-than the African Americanmothers. African American mothers have morepositive attitudes toward working women, a resultthat fits with their greaterlikelihood of being em-ployed. These results suggest that there are cleardifferences in the home environments in whichthese young men grew up.

African American and White sons reflect thesedifferences in their own characteristics. Even in1971, the earliest year, there are strong differ-ences between African American and White boysin educational attainment and household income.There is little difference in employment at thisage, and while there is a substantial difference inmarital status, it is only marginally significant.Like their mothers, African American young menare significantly more liberal than Whites on theWorking Wives Scale, supporting the first hy-pothesis.Over the next decade, there are significant racedifferences in all sociodemographic and attitudemeasures. The direction and size of the differencesare quite stable, with one exception. As the firsthypothesis predicts, in every year African Ameri-can men are more liberal than Whites on theWorking Wives Scales. Moreover, the positionsare reversed on the more diverse New GenderRole Scale with White men having significantlymore liberal attitudes than African American men.These results confirm the first hypothesis predict-ing more liberal attitudes toward working wivesfor African American men than for Whites, but re-versing the direction on more general gender roleissues. Although not shown here, similar resultsare found for years where an equivalent broader

measure of gender role attitudes is available forthe boys' mothers. In addition to the implicationsof the factor analyses, these results provide furtherevidence that the two scales measure different di-mensions of gender role attitudes,with the Work-ing Wives Scale presentinga narrower assessmentof working wives.One other finding from this table is evident.Although the direction and size of the differencesbetween African American and White men re-main stable, mean scores show that both AfricanAmericans and Whites are generally favorable to-ward working wives, with the strengthof positiveattitudes steadily increasing over time. This sup-ports the second hypothesis. It is not possiblefrom these data to disentangle life course devel-opment from period effects. The decade from1971 to 1981 spans the development of theseyoung men from early youth to established adult-hood. It also witnessed major changes in normsand expectations about women's proper roles, andthese young men's increasingly liberal attitudesappearto be in keeping with these changes.Table 2 tests hypotheses about the influence ofsons' own statuses and their mothers' influenceon their gender role attitudes over time. For thethree time periods, the Working Wives Scalescore is regressed on both sons' characteristicsand their mothers' employment and gender roleattitudes in 1967, when the boys were ages 15 to

25. For both African Americans and Whites, thepredictive power of these models (although small)improves over time.In most years, only sons' characteristics ex-plain their attitudes. Contrary to the third and

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TABLE 2. REGRESSION OF SON'S GENDER ROLE ATTITUDE ON SON AND MOTHER CHARACTERISTICSBY RACE1971WorkingWives Scale 1976 WorkingWives Scale 1981 WorkingWives S

African African AfricanAmerican White bAA-bw American White bAA-bw American White bASon marriedbPSE

SonemployedbPSESon's educationb

SESon's incomeb (x 1000)PSE (x 1000)Motheremployed 1967bPSEMothers'WorkingWives ScalebpSEInterceptSER2AdjustedR2

F

.59 .73* -.14(.11) (.12).53 .39-.12 .12 0

(-.02) (.02).57 .41.03 .24*** -.21**

(.03) (.15).10 .08-.11 -.10** -.01***

(-.13) (-.13).08 .05-.30 .00 -.30(-.06) (.00).48 .32

-.24 -.70** .46(-.05) (-.11).48 .35-.12 -.20 .08(-.02) (-.02).59 .45

.07 .22*** -.15(.07) (.18).09 .06.02 .04** -.02

(.06) (.12).03 .02-.03 .35 -.38(-.01) (.06).44 .28

-.70** -.28 -(-.18) (-.05).33 .31.43 -.30(.08) (-.03).44 .46.07 .22*** -

(.10) (.21).07 .06.01 .02* -

(.06) (.10).01 .01-.59* -.10 -

(-.16) (-.02).32 .26.03 .02 .01 -.04 -.01 -.03 .06 .02 -(.04) (-.01) (-.05) (-.01) (.08) (.03).08 .06 .08 .05 .01 .05

11.00 7.09 3.91*** 11.83 8.68 3.15** 11.52 9.081.68 1.30 1.47 1.09 1.07 .93.02 .03 .01 .07 .10 .07(-.02) (.02) (-.03) (.06) (.05) (.05).50 2.02* .301 4.87*** 2.28** 4.46***

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fourth hypotheses, there are very few significantmaternal influences. With one exception, moth-ers' employment has no effect on sons' attitudes.However, the negative effect of mother employ-ment on attitudes of African American men to-ward women's gender roles in 1981 suggests thepossibility that when African American menreach maturity and have established their ownfamilies, they react conservatively to their youth-ful experience of their mothers' employment. Thelack of any consistency to this effect, however,recommends caution in interpreting this result.Surprisingly, in no year is there a significant ef-fect of mothers' attitudes on the gender role atti-tudes of sons.

The effect of sons' own characteristicson gen-der role attitudes varies by race. There arestronger results for White men than for AfricanAmerican men, as indicated by education and in-come effects for Whites in every year, but fewsignificant effects for African Americans. Thus,there are class differences among White men, butnot African American men. More highly educatedWhite men hold consistently more liberal atti-tudes about women's gender roles than less edu-cated White men. Income, too, has a positive ef-fect on the gender role attitudes of White men in1976 and 1981, after they are established in adultemployment roles. For African American men,neither income nor education affects attitudes to-ward working wives.Among the most interesting results is the in-consistent effect of marriage on men's attitudestoward working wives across the different timeperiods. In the earliest two waves it is significantfor White men, and it changes from a strong posi-tive in 1971 to an almost equally strong negativeeffect in 1976. For African American men, mari-tal status does not have a significant effect on atti-tude toward working wives in either 1971 or1976, but the direction of the effect is the same asfor Whites. In 1981, marital status remains nega-tive but is no longer significant for White menand it has a strong negative effect for AfricanAmerican men.

Contraryto the overall trend toward more lib-eral attitudes from 1971 to 1981, marriage-netof other life course events-has a negative effecton men's attitudes toward women's employment.The minority of both White and African Ameri-can men who are married in early adulthood havemore liberal attitudes about women's gender rolesthan do same-age unmarried men of both races.The reversal of this effect for both groups, net of

other factors, in later time periods suggests eitherthat marriageitself fosters more conservative atti-tudes about women's employment over the lifecourse or that men who marry early are morelikely to be liberal than those who marry "ontime." Early marriages may be more likely tohave working wives-as a result of economic ne-cessity-suggesting that gender role attitudesconform to life course experience.The final column of Table 2 shows the regres-sion of the broader New Gender Role Scale on thesame set of mother and son variables. In thismodel, too, mother variables have no influence.Sons' characteristics affect scores on the NewGender Role Scale but with some differences fromthose on the Working Wives Scale. As expected,education has a similarly strong positive influencefor both African American and White young men.As in previous analyses, income has a small posi-tive effect on gender roles for Whites. Once again,an interestingmarital status effect emerges. Thereis a very strong negative effect for White mencompared with a weaker and nonsignificant posi-tive effect for African Americans, reinforcing ourexpectation that gender role attitudes are multi-dimensional for African American men.

Finally, we test for racial differences across themodels. As previously mentioned, there are smallsignificant additive race effects on the WorkingWives Scale in each of the 3 years. The interceptsdemonstrate that differences between AfricanAmerican and White men are largerthan indicatedin the bivariateanalysis. The difference diminishesand is not significant using the New Gender RoleScale. Additionally,thereare several significant in-teraction effects, with t tests for differences inslope coefficients showing a significantrace differ-ence in the effect of education on the WorkingWives Scale in 1971 and 1981. There is a signifi-cant race-income difference in 1971 only. Finally,a suggestive but nonsignificant race difference inmarriage using the Working Wives Scale is muchlargerand attainssignficance when using the NewGender Role Scale in 1981. These results suggestsmall but real model differences for the twogroups, although they cannot be explained by dif-ferences in maternal nfluences as hypothesized.

CONCLUSIONThis article investigates three aspects of malegender role development. The three aspects are:(a) race differences between African Americanand White men's attitudes about women's gender

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roles, (b) changes in gender role attitudes acrosstime, and (c) the maternal and life course influ-ences on gender role attitudes. The findings ofthis study support the hypotheses that AfricanAmerican and White men differ in their attitudesabout women's gender roles, that beliefs aboutgender roles change across time, and that individ-ual status and life course processes influence gen-der role attitudes. There is little evidence of ma-ternal influence for either group.Although there are strongand significant racialdifferences in male gender role attitudes,with oneexception we do not find any significant effect ofeven the most salient aspects of maternal influ-ence-mothers' employment and gender role atti-tudes-on adult sons' attitudes about the desirabil-ity of wives working. In other analyses not report-ed we examined a multitudeof othermaternalandbackground factors, such as mother's education,household income, mother's marital status, andmother's gender role attitudes at later time peri-ods, but none were significant for either Whites orAfrican Americans. These findings are contrarytopast results from more limited data sources.Additionally, the race difference in the influ-ence of sons' own characteristics on their role atti-tudes is both intriguing and perplexing. WhileAfrican American young men clearly grow up indifferent home environments than White youngmen, there is little in our analysis to suggest thatthese differences influence their adult role atti-tudes. Status and structural ocations clearly influ-ence White men's attitudes, but have much lesseffect for African American men. In partthis mayreflect less variancein African American attitudes.African American men are more liberal in their at-titudes toward working wives, and they are farmore likely to have experienced a household witha working wife/mother. The two results are un-doubtedly connected: African American men maybe more accepting of working wives, because theyexperience and recognize it as economic necessi-ty. It also may reflect a larger problem of thesalience of these measures of gender role attitudesfor African Americans compared with Whites.Further exploration of racial differences in thestructure and content of gender roles is called forby these results. In short, these results suggestsupportfor the idea thatthere are importantcultur-al as well as structural differences in AfricanAmerican and White experience, an area of studythatrequiresmuch more detailed investigation.Finally, this study is suggestive of both periodand developmental effects. The decade under in-

vestigation was a time of major reorganizationofgender role beliefs and practices, and the growingliberalism of all respondents may well reflect thelarger societal change. At the same time, this co-hort of young men was moving throughimportanttransitions in the life course, and the results arealso congruent with this type of change. The im-pact of marital status is especially indicative oflife course effects, since it suggests a modifica-tion of gender role beliefs based on direct experi-ence with the issues measured in these scales.Further investigation should pursue other adultrole differences that may account for race differ-ences in men's gender role attitudes.

NOTEThe authors contributedequally to this article. An earlierversion of the article was presentedat the 1993 meetingsof the American Sociological Association. The authorsthank Melissa Latimerfor assistance in dataanalysis.

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APPENDIXFACTORNALYSISFSONS'1981GENDEROLE TTITUDETEMSAfricanAmerican White

Factor1New GenderRole ScaleItem 1. A woman'splace isin thehome.Item 2. A wife with a familydoesn't have time for

employment.Item3. Men shouldbe theachievers outsidethehome.Item4. Womenarehappierat home takingcareof children.Item 5. Men shouldperformtheir share of housework.

Factor2WorkingWivesScaleItem 1. It is all rightfor awife to work if it is necessaryto makeends meet.

Item2. It is all rightfora wifeto workif she desiresandher husbandagrees.Item3. It is all rightfora wifeto work if she desires andherhusbanddisagrees.Itemsnot includedon scaleItem 4. Womenarehappierathome takingcareof children.Item5. Employmentof parentsneededto keep up withcosts.Item 6. Employmentof wifeleadstojuvenine delinquency.Item7. Conveniences allowwife to workwithout

neglecting family.

.79 .75

.76 .69

.61 .67

.57 .47

.43 .44

.57 .73

.56 .57

.42 .54

.47

.42.49

.44

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BLEE_Racial Differences in Men Attitudes About Women Gender Roles