perceptions of parents as a function of their marital status and sex

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child Dev. 8: 149–154 (1999)

Perceptions of Parents as aFunction of their Marital Statusand Sex

Mark Bennett* and Lynne JamiesonDepartment of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN,Scotland, UK

This study examines participants’ perceptions of four differentmale and female parent groups (married, divorced, step andnever-married parents) and, as a comparison group, of men andwomen in general. Using an independent groups design, inwhich participants made estimations of the percentage of asingle specified group possessing particular characteristics, it isfound that perceptions of married parents tend to be morepositive than perceptions of other groups. The never-marriedtend to be viewed least positively. Overall, perceptions of moth-ers are typically more favourable than those of fathers. Copy-right © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: marital status; parents; perceptions; sex

Despite the view of liberal commentators that a plurality of family forms is bothdesirable and legitimate (e.g. Rapaport, 1989), perceptions of mothers have beenfound to vary substantially as a function of their marital status. For example,relative to divorced mothers, married mothers are viewed as more nurturant,better adjusted and better suited to employment (e.g. Russell and Rush, 1987;Etaugh and Nekolny, 1990; Etaugh and Poertner, 1991; Riedle, 1991). Thus,whilst there clearly exists great diversity in parental roles within Westerncultures (Rapaport et al., 1982), available research suggests that significantlygreater esteem attaches to some parental statuses than to others.

A study which is noteworthy for having addressed many of the limitations ofprevious research in this area is that of Ganong and Coleman (1995). This studyrequired participants to make estimates of the percentage of women possessingparticular traits under a range of general headings: positive personal character-istics, negative personal characteristics, childrearing, family/marital relation-ships, family of origin and lifestyle. Judgements were made over five categoriesof women: married mothers, divorced mothers, step-mothers, never-marriedmothers and women in general. Ganong and Coleman’s findings reinforced andextended those of previous researchers: over all the general headings, marriedmothers were perceived more positively than any of the other groups, includ-ing, importantly, women in general. While both divorced and step-mothers

* Correspondence to: Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scot-land, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

CCC 1522–7227/99/030149-06$17.50Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 4 May 1998Revised 5 November 1998

Accepted 17 February 1999

M. Bennett and L. Jamieson150

were viewed significantly less positively than married women and women ingeneral, the most negative judgements were of unmarried mothers.

Although Ganong and Coleman’s work represents the most comprehensivestudy of the perceptions of mothers, it is nevertheless vulnerable to criticism. Amethodological weakness of this study is that it relied upon a repeated mea-sures design: participants made ratings across all five categories of women.Since judgements were made within an explicitly comparative context, thestudy’s purpose will have been clear to participants, and it is not unreasonableto suppose that the consistency of responses within and between categories ofmothers may have been an artifact of participants’ desire to provide coherentjudgements. Had an independent groups design been employed (with eachparticipant providing judgements about a single group of mothers), it is possiblethat the data would have been characterized by greater within-group variabilityand smaller between-group variability. Thus, Ganong and Coleman’s study mayhave exaggerated the extent to which there is social consensus about thesevarious groups of mothers. We contend that if such studies are to capturesomething of the social representations (Moscovici, 1981) that might exist in thisdomain, then it is vital that repeated measures designs be avoided: only ifdifferences in judgements of mothers can be shown between independentgroups of participants will it be possible to make a strong case for there beingsocially shared conceptions of the various groups.

Substantively, Ganong and Coleman’s study is limited as they themselvesnote by the fact that, like other research in the field, it looks at the effects ofmarital status only upon the perception of mothers. The question remains as towhether the perception of fathers is similarly affected. Insofar as marriage is ahighly valued institution within our culture (Kitson et al., 1980), it might bepredicted that its enhancing effect is general and that married fathers, too, maybe viewed more favourably than other groups of fathers. However, consistentwith this point, it is also plausible to suggest that since within Western culturemarital status may be more central to the identity of women than of men(Delphy and Leonard, 1992; Jackson, 1993), marital status may interact withgender in participants’ judgements of target persons and have a greater bearingon the perception of mothers than of fathers. This possibility is examined in thestudy that follows.

METHOD

Participants

A total of 200 undergraduate students aged 17–47 years (with a median age of19 years) participated in this study, 147 of whom were female and 53 male. Allwere pursuing psychology as part of an introductory programme in the socialsciences.

Procedure

Participants were required to make estimations of the percentage of a specifiedtarget group possessing particular characteristics. The characteristics selectedwere 26 descriptors which had been found by Ganong and Coleman (1995) to beparticularly discriminating. The descriptors fell under five general headings:positive traits (caring, dependable, intelligent, independent, protective and re-spected), negative traits (impatient, irresponsible, loose morals, selfish, unhappy

Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child Dev. 8: 149–154 (1999)

Perceptions of Parents 151

and unstable); childrearing ability (children out of control, bad role model forchildren, inadequate parent, emotional caretaker, listened to by children, knowsa lot about children); family lifestyle (not family-orientated, financially dependenton others, available for family, remains at home); family of origin (was not raisedproperly, had poor role models growing up, had happy childhood, had goodrelationships with parents). Items were presented in two different randomorders.

There were five target groups: married, divorced, step, never-married, andmen/women in general. Half the sample were required to provide estimationsfor men within a category, the other half, women.

The instructions given to participants at the head of response sheets was asfollows: ‘Please indicate the percentage of [married mothers; divorced fathers,etc.] you believe have each of the following characteristics. Do not think ofpeople you know personally, but of [married mothers; divorced fathers, etc] ingeneral. For each statement, please respond with a percentage ranging from 0 to100’.

Following their percentage estimations, participants were asked to provideinformation about their sex, marital status, and whether or not they had anychildren.

RESULTS

A principal components analysis with varimax rotation was performed onparticipants’ percentage estimations over the 26 descriptors. This resulted inthree factors which together accounted for 46% of the variance in estimations.Factor 1, which accounted for 28.7% of the variance, was broadly concernedwith family relations and parenting skills. It had an eigenvalue of 7.46 andcomprised the following variables (factor loadings given in parentheses): chil-dren out of control (0.62), bad role model for children (0.78), inadequate parent(0.75), not family-orientated (0.69), was not raised properly (0.74), and had poorrole models growing up (0.56). Factor 2, accounting for 10.6% of the variance,had an eigenvalue of 2.74 and was concerned with negative personal traits:impatient (0.77), irresponsible (0.69), loose morals (0.75) and selfish (0.80). Factor3 accounted for 6.5% of the total variance, with an eigenvalue of 1.69. Itcomprised items mostly reflecting nurturance: caring (0.68), emotional caretaker(0.62), intelligent (0.55) and dependable (0.60).

The items loading on the factors were taken as a basis for creating newvariables. Thus for each participant, values were created by summing over itemestimations comprising the particular factor and dividing by the total number ofitems comprising that factor.

A 2 (target sex)×5 (target group) analysis of variance conducted on valuesfor factor 1—family relations and parenting—yielded a highly significant maineffect of target group: F(4, 190)=10.28, pB0.001. Post hoc analysis (NeumanKeuls) showed that never-marrieds (M=41.3, S.D.=16.82) were viewed asmore likely than any other group to have poor family relations and parentingskills (people in general, M=28.75, S.D.=10.23; marrieds, M=22.89, S.D.=8.48; divorced, M=32.61, S.D.=12.39; step, M=29.64, S.D.=12.46) (pB0.05);divorced parents were viewed as less likely to be competent in this respect thanwere married parents (pB0.05). There was also a main effect of target gender(F(4, 190)=4.33, pB0.05): men were viewed less favourably than were women(men, M=33.0, S.D.=14.79; women, M=29.08, S.D.=14.41). There was nointeraction effect.



Table 1. Mean percentage estimations (with S.D.s in parentheses) for factor 2(negative traits) over target groups and target sex

Target groupTarget sex

Married Divorced StepWomen/men Never-marriedin general

36.45 24.20 35.00 43.75 37.35Women(13.72) (12.00) (14.63) (17.80) (14.78)

30.40 40.81Men 37.06 54.5154.93(12.93) (15.25) (14.42) (16.65)(16.60)

A 2 (target sex)×5 (target group) analysis of variance conducted on valuesfor factor 2—negative personal traits—produced a highly significant maineffect of target group (F(4, 190)=10.35, pB0.01). Post hoc analysis establishedonly that negative traits were perceived to be less prevalent amongst marrieds(M=27.3, S.D.=12.7) than any other group (people in general, M=45.69,S.D.=17.7; divorced, M=37.86, S.D.=15.06; step, M=40.4, S.D.=16.3; never-married, M=45.93, S.D.=17.8). A main effect of target gender demonstratedthat, overall, men were perceived as having more negative traits than werewomen (F(4, 190)=4.33, pB0.05): men M=43.54, S.D.=17.84; women M=35.73, S.D.=15.74. However, this effect was qualified by a highly significantinteraction between the variables: F(4, 190)=4.65, pB0.001. Thus, whilst therewere no differences between married, divorced and step mothers and fathers,more men in general were seen to possess negative traits than were women ingeneral; never-married fathers, too, were viewed as more likely to possessnegative traits than were never-married mothers. (See Table 1 for means andS.D.s.)

Similarily, a 2 (target sex)×5 (target group) ANOVA performed on values forfactor 3—nurturance—demonstrated a highly significant effect of targets’ mari-tal status on participants’ judgement: F(4, 190)=5.48, pB0.001. A greater pro-portion of marrieds (M=68.41, S.D.=12.25) than any of the other parentalstatuses were seen as possessing such traits (divorced, M=59.1, S.D.=12.15;step, M=57.9, S.D.=13.45; never-married, M=56.7, S.D.=15.43), though mar-rieds were not significantly distinguished from people in general (M=61.9,S.D.=12.24). Again, there was a main effect of target sex: F(4, 190)=9.45,pB0.01. Fewer men than women were seen to possess traits of nurturance (men,M=57.07, S.D.=14.11; women, M=63.07, S.D.=12.58). However, this effect

Table 2. Mean percentage estimations (with S.D.s in parentheses) for factor 3(nurturance) over target groups and target sex

Target sex Target group

StepWomen/men Never-marriedMarried Divorcedin general

55.62 61.2561.68Women 67.30 72.52(16.75)(12.21) (8.85) (12.67) (13.53)

52.31Men 56.50 64.31 56.51 60.75(11.38) (13.09)(9.87) (12.91)(13.08)


Perceptions of Parents 153

was qualified by an interaction with target group: F(4, 190)=2.71, pB0.05. Posthoc analysis showed that although there were significant differences betweenmen and women across all groups (pB0.05), such differences were moremarked between men and women in general and between married mothers andfathers (pB0.01). (See Table 2 for means and S.D.s.)

Participant sex, age, and marital status and whether or not participants hadchildren had no significant effects on percentage estimations given.

DISCUSSION

The findings of this study are consistent with previous research in that therewould appear to be more favourable views of some marital statuses than others.Thus, a greater proportion of married parents than any other group were judgedto possess traits of nurturance; similarly, married parents were seen as lesslikely to have negative traits than any of the other groups. In contrast, never-married parents were seen as significantly more likely than any of the othergroups to have poor family relations and parenting skills. As such, given the useof an independent groups design, our findings suggest the existence of fairlyconsensual social representations in this area. The commonalities between ourfindings and those of previous researchers are particularly striking given thatearlier work has been conducted in the USA, whereas this study was conductedin the UK. It is worth noting, however, (a) that the factors obtained in this studycollectively accounted for less than half the total variance in participants’estimates, and (b) that there was a reasonable degree of within-group variabilityin participants’ estimates, as can be seen from the large S.D.s for each of thegroups over all three variables. Thus, parental status, though important, shouldnot be seen as over-determining social perception.

In addition to providing broad confirmation of earlier work, this studyextends previous findings by looking at perceptions of both mothers andfathers. Regardless of parental status, men were seen as more likely to havepoor family relations and parenting skills, and as less nurturant than women.With respect to negative personal traits, however, men were perceived lessfavourably than women only with respect to two target groups: people ingeneral and the never-married. Overall, then, the data do not support ourcontention that marital status would interact with gender in participants’judgements of target persons and have a relatively greater bearing on theperception of mothers than of fathers.

Participant sex, age, marital status and whether or not participants had anychildren, were not found to have significant effects on the percentage estima-tions of the target groups. However, since our sample comprised predominantlyunmarried (n=178) and childless people (n=180), this finding should betreated cautiously. It is desirable therefore that future research examine theeffects of particular group memberships on perceptions of various parentgroups more thoroughly. Despite our caution, we speculate that such member-ships may not substantially affect participants’ perceptions. This speculation issuggested by the work of Smith (1997), which found no differences betweensingle mothers and married mothers in their personal judgements of satisfactionwith motherhood, but revealed that ‘all mothers, regardless of their own status,perceived married mothers to be significantly more satisfied with motherhoodthan single mothers’ (p. 530). Thus, it seems possible that social representationsin this domain may be relatively robust.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms ofan earlier version of this paper.

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