Gender and values in 20 years of the European Social Survey: Are gender-typical values linked to parenthood?

Abstract

Using data from ten rounds of the European Social Survey 2002–2020 (n = 158,126) across 32 European countries, Russia, Turkey and Israel, we examined whether a typically male or female value profile (gender typicality) was related to having children at home among participants between 18 and 45 years. To assess gender typicality, we employed a novel measure that assesses the value profile of each individual and the extent to which an individual’s values match the higher or lower values among each sex. Multilevel logistic regression results showed that, as expected, male-typical values were related to childlessness for women and, to a lesser extent, for men. In turn, having female-typical values was related to higher chances of having children for both. The proportion of individuals not having children increased through the ESS waves. Time, however, did not influence the association between gender typicality and having children for either men or women. Our results suggest that the association between value typicality and fertility has remained similar for the last 20 years.

Plain language summary

Using data from the European Social Survey, this study examines whether typically male values relate to a lower likelihood of parenthood, whether typically female values relate to a higher likelihood of parenthood and whether these associations vary by gender, country and time. Results showed that women and men who score high on male-typical values (e.g. power and achievement) were not likely to have children (own, adopted or fostered) at home. In turn, participants that scored high on values typically valued by women (e.g. benevolence, caring for nature and society at large) were more likely to have children. This effect was stronger for women than for men. These results are consistent across countries, and the association of value typicality and parenthood has remained consistent in 20 years of the European Social Survey.

Keywords

values parenthood gender typicality European Social Survey

The current fertility decline in most European countries (OECD, 2023) has been explained by the Second Demographic Transition (Van de Kaa, 2001), arguing that such a trend is linked to the increasing importance of individualistic or post-materialistic values. This shift in societies towards more open, post-materialistic/self-expression values (Inglehart, 1997) is assumed to have created a more liberal environment shifting away from traditional institutions and values, resulting in increased rates of divorce and cohabitation and decreased fertility (Lesthaeghe, 2010). In these societies, individuals have more freedom to choose and be guided by personal preferences rather than the institutions and social structures that traditionally guide family formation. There is currently a call for more research into the psychological determinants of fertility choices, particularly among recent cohorts.

Values are mental representations of broad, abstract goals that act as guiding principles, helping individuals determine what matters most in their lives (Schwartz, 1992). Values differ from goals, which are defined as concrete expressions of future plans (Locke & Latham, 1990). Values motivate value-consistent behaviour intrinsically (because it is considered important and worthy) and provide the rationale and justification for specific goals. Goals are context-specific and can be pursued for intrinsic or extrinsic (e.g. money) reasons (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998). Personality traits, in turn, are typically defined as descriptions of people in terms of relatively stable patterns of behaviour, thoughts and emotions (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 2003). Whereas traits describe how a person reports they are, values reflect what they like and would like for their life, that is, they express a motivation. This difference makes traits better predictors of spontaneous behaviour. At the same time, values predict more strongly planned or deliberate behaviour (Roccas et al., 2002), such as voting (Vecchione et al., 2013), religiosity (Saroglou et al., 2004) or career choices (Lipshits-Braziler et al., 2024).

Surprisingly, apart from the work by Lönnqvist and colleagues (2018), there has been a lack of comprehensive studies analysing whether personal values, as outlined by Schwartz (1992), are linked to parenthood. This gap is surprising, considering that personal values play a crucial role in shaping lifestyle preferences and behaviours, which require conscious planning and weighing of options (Sagiv & Schwartz, 2022). While existing research has explored the bidirectional connections between life goals and parenthood (Katz-Wise et al., 2010; Salmela-Aro et al., 2000; Wehner et al., 2022), as well as the influence of personality traits on fertility behaviours and parenthood (Berg et al., 2013; Jokela, 2012; Skirbekk & Blekesaune, 2014; Tavares, 2016), there remains limited investigations into the relationship between values and parenthood. To contribute to filling this gap, in this study, we examine the association between gender-typical values and having children across European countries following one of the most prominent theories in value research: Schwartz´s value priorities (1992–2012) across more than 40 countries included in the European Social Survey (ESS).

Research has shown that values display consistent gender differences across countries (Fors Connolly et al., 2020; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005). Schwartz and Rubel (2005) studied 127 samples from over 70 countries. Schwartz and Rubel (2005) reported gender differences in value importance as mean Cohen´s d, which were .36 (benevolence), .26 (universalism), −.10 (self-direction), −.14 (stimulation), −.11 (hedonism), −.24 (achievement), −.29 (power), −.20 (security), .01 (conformity) and .16 (tradition). Positive coefficients show higher scores among women than men. Results by Schwartz and Rubel (2005) indicated gender differences in value importance, showing that men scored higher on power and achievement, stimulation/hedonism and self-direction. In contrast, women scored higher on benevolence and universalism. On the other hand, women tend to score higher than men, though less consistently, on security and normative/conformity-tradition values, all of which focus on caring and maintaining social relationships (Gouveia et al., 2015; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005; Schwartz & Rubel-Lifschitz, 2009). More recently, Fors Connolly and colleagues (2020) showed that men scored higher than women on achievement, power and stimulation, while women scored higher than men on benevolence and universalism using European Social Survey (ESS) data. Hence, a guiding question for us is whether values typically emphasised by men and women¹ are differently linked to the chances of having children.

We contribute to research by employing a novel way to assess gender differences in values based on the notions of masculinity-femininity measured by statistically combining multiple variables into a single index (Ilmarinen et al., 2023; Lippa, 1991), which assesses whether the participant has a typically masculine/feminine value profile. The advantage of this index is that it separates the typical male or typical female value profile from the participant´s self-reported binary gender (it allows, for instance, a female respondent to be high on male typicality in values). This measure of gender typicality/atypicality based on ten personal values (i.e. continuous measure of value-genderedness; see Ilmarinen et al., 2023) is ideal to indicate whether individuals have typical or atypical values of their gender as it allows to combine information on several variables at the same time. We use parenthood as a binary outcome of this index and data from ten rounds of data collected in the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2020 (ESS rounds 1–10) to assess whether value typicality is related to having children across twenty years of ESS data.

We also examine whether the association between typical gendered values and parenthood changed over 20 years (2002–2020), as suggested by some research pointing to the heightened role of personal dispositions, including values, for lifestyle choices and the fertility decline (Comolli et al., 2021; Skirbekk & Blekesaune, 2014). A new report suggests that there is a gender divide in political values which has emerged over the last two decades, driving men and women apart, which may also underlie family formation difficulties (Campbell et al., 2024).

Literature review

Schwartz value theory

The Schwartz value theory is the most widely used and validated theory of human values. Schwartz (1992) defined values as desirable, trans-situational goals varying in importance as guiding principles in people’s lives. According to the original theory, ten universal basic personal values have been empirically found in more than 70 countries worldwide. Values form a motivational continuum, so closer values in the structure share similar and compatible motivations and are opposite or in conflict with the motivation underlying the opposite values. Four higher-order values summarise the interrelations between competing values (second circle from the centre of Figure 1). Self-transcendence values (benevolence and universalism) motivate caring for the well-being of others and social justice and oppose self-enhancement values (power and achievement), which focus on personal gain, dominance and success according to social standards. Openness to change (self-direction and stimulation) fosters the motivation for independent action, creativity and pleasure. It opposes conservation values (conformity, tradition and security) that concern maintaining the status quo, self-restriction and resistance to change. Values also cluster based on the goals they serve. The broader circle in Figure 1 displays the general opposition between person-focused values, which aim to express one’s personality and interests, and social-focused values (on the right), which primarily regulate how one relates socially to others and support social relations (Schwartz, 1992, 2006).

Figure 1.

The circular structure of ten basic values, four higher-order values and two underlying motivational sources (adapted from Schwartz, 2015).

In terms of Schwartz’s value theory that we use here, individuals tend to behave in ways consistent with their values, especially when it comes to important life decisions, such as career choices (Knafo & Sagiv, 2004; Roccas et al., 2002). Values may guide behaviours because individuals aim to reduce self-discrepancy and behave consistently with their values or socially valued ways of behaving. Values are ordered in a personal hierarchy of importance, and the priority of a value dimension in that hierarchy will determine choices and behaviour (Schwartz, 1992). However, individuals do not always behave in line with their values, and particularly when entering parenthood, there might be several obstacles, such as economic instability or partnership instability. Still, we expect values to play a small but crucial role in guiding individuals towards or away from having children based also on the ideas from Van de Kaa´s Second Demographic Transition (Van de Kaa, 2001) on the potential role of individualistic values on reduced fertility.

In fact, individualistic values that have been seen as one potential driver of the fertility decline on aggregate levels (Lesthaeghe, 2010; Van de Kaa, 2001) can be best captured by self-focused values, which capture not only openness but also self-enhancement values (see Smallenbroek, 2023). Self-focused values prioritise expressing one’s characteristics and interests instead of focussing on maintaining and supporting social relationships (Schwartz, 1992, 2006) and are generally higher among men than women. As reviewed above, the pro-social values of self-transcendence and conservation are generally higher among women (Fors Connolly et al., 2020; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005; Schwartz & Rubel-Lifschitz, 2009).

Values, goals and family formation

As reviewed above, values are linked with personal goals, which are more concrete expressions of plans (Locke & Latham, 1990). Values are general motivational principles and provide the rationale and justification for specific goals (Roccas et al., 2002). In line with life-span development theories, studies have shown that young people´s personal goals direct their future lives (Brandtstädter, 1984; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1997). This is particularly true for interpersonal goals (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007): those young adults who initially had family-related goals married or started to cohabit earlier and were more likely to have children later on compared to other young people (see also Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1997). Also, the more family goals young adults had, the earlier the timing of parenthood (Salmela-Aro et al., 2007).

A recent study showed evidence of goals guiding self-selection effects in the transition to parenthood (Wehner et al., 2022). Their findings also showed that women without children tended to endorse agentic life goals (variation and achievement) more than mothers (Wehner et al., 2022). In line with this, Clarkberg and colleagues (1995) longitudinal study of a nationally representative cohort of high school seniors in the United States from 1972 to 1986 found that the importance of money and leisure (which reflect power and, to some degree, hedonism values) were negatively related to the probability of forming a first union and negatively related to marriage (instead of cohabitation). These studies point to the potential role of self-focused values, linked to agentic life goals, such as advancing in one´s career (e.g. Buchanan & Bardi, 2015) in driving individuals away from family formation.

Personality traits and values are correlated in expected ways; for instance, pro-social trait agreeableness is correlated with personal values, which emphasise the importance of social relations, such as benevolence and conformity (Parks-Leduc et al., 2015). Personality research has shown that pro-social traits like high extraversion, agreeableness and low neuroticism were associated with a high fertility rate (Jokela, 2012). In twin studies, agreeableness and conscientiousness shared some genetic variation with fertility timing and completed fertility (Briley et al., 2017). The effect of agreeableness was significant only for females in an Australian study (Whyte et al., 2019). Higher sociability in men increased their likelihood of having children in Finland (Jokela et al., 2009). Agreeableness correlates positively with the value of caring about social relationships, particularly towards people in their close environment (benevolence), also towards people in society in general (universalism) and also with the value of restraining impulses to fit in (conformity and tradition), possibly to facilitate getting along with others (Parks-Leduc et al., 2015).

Other research has shown the impact of parenthood on values and goals. Lönnqvist and colleagues (2018) showed that parents and non-parents differed in their values. Compared to non-mothers, Finnish mothers scored higher on conservation values (Study 1, in the general population). Examining longitudinal value change after motherhood, women became more conservative (Study 2). Results for men in the conservation-openness to change dimension were inconsistent. Compared to non-fathers, Finnish fathers scored somewhat higher on self-transcendence values, but the results were small (Lönnqvist et al., 2018). These results are consistent with other studies suggesting that, in general, parents became more traditional in their gender-role attitudes and behaviour following the birth of a child (Katz-Wise et al., 2010). For instance, mothers’ goals moved towards caring and family-related goals away from achievement goals after birth (Salmela-Aro et al., 2000), and in this way, they reconstructed their goals to match their life stage.

The reviewed evidence indicates that parenthood might be negatively related to those values which are higher among men: power, achievement and stimulation (self-focused). In turn, self-transcendence values (universalism and benevolence) and conservation (security, tradition and conformity), all of which are social-focused values and higher among women, seem to align with family formation.

Gender typicality

This study employs a measure of gender typicality/atypicality based on ten personal values (Ilmarinen et al., 2023) and data from ten rounds of data collected in the European Social Survey (ESS, 2002–2020). The gender typicality of values used in this study informs about the individuals’ probability of having a highly typical male or female value profile, and it empirically follows the idea of gender diagnosticity (for more specific information, see Lippa & Connelly, 1990; Ilmarinen et al., 2023). This typicality is given on a probability scale ranging from 0 to 1 and interpreted as indicating the extent to which an individual´s values align with those typical of males or females (Young & Sweeting, 2004). This allows a male respondent to be extremely high (closer to 1) or extremely low (0) on male typicality in values. Hence, value typicality refers to how atypical or typical an individual’s values are compared to others of the same gender in the population. In this sense, highly typical male values will be obtained by a person (man or woman) that, to some degree, deviates from the average values reported by males and scores higher (or lower, depending on the value) than the average.

To facilitate data analysis, we used a measure of value gender typicality that was keyed so that high scores represent high levels of male typicality in an individual’s value profile and low scores indicate low levels of male typicality (thus, high female typicality in the same way that high scores of male typicality reflect low levels of female typicality). Hence, in this study, gender (a)typicality in values is used as a continuum from highly female-typical (0) to highly male-typical (1)². Hereafter, we use the term male typicality to denote the direction of the gender typicality measure. It is crucial to keep in mind that high male typicality does not refer to having the mean values of the group; these are not prototypical group members but rather individuals of either gender who report higher/lower on those values where males, on average, score higher than women, like power and achievement, and vice versa for female typicality. In this sense, very high male typicality would be attributed to someone with extreme values scores, not someone who scores similarly as average (see Supplemental Material 1 for further information on this typicality measure).

The role of context: Culture and time

The role of value typicality in having children might vary depending on the country’s level of conservatism or embeddedness (Schwartz, 2006). Embeddedness refers to the importance placed on respecting traditions and family (e.g. respecting and caring for the family), security and maintaining the status quo. This cultural value is highest in Eastern Europe and lowest in Nordic countries (Schwartz, 2006). Prioritising typical male values for men, on the other hand, could be less penalised and more in line with a conservative context where the traditional role of men is characterised by being the breadwinner rather than the carer. In turn, women’s values could be even more reinforced for childbearing. In this sense, in more conservative societies, being typically female in terms of values could be expected to have a stronger connection with having children, as these societies tend to emphasise traditional gender roles (Schwartz, 2006). Similar reasoning could be applied to the level of country religiosity. Our study has the advantage of including representative data from countries with different cultural backgrounds in Europe. Hence, we tested the role of religiosity and conservative values at the country level and examined whether these could strengthen/weaken the effect of value typicality on the likelihood of having children.

Childbearing decisions have also been argued to increasingly depend on partner characteristics, such as personality markers, particularly for later-born cohorts (Rahnu & Jalovaara, 2023; Skirbekk & Blekesaune, 2014). That is, as today’s individualistic young adults are allegedly freer and more independent to choose their life paths. However, this includes more extended dating periods and several partnerships, allowing potential partners to identify whether the other is likely suitable as a parent. Thus, combined with the freedom to choose, longer decision-making periods might have made partnering and family formation more precarious than in the past. Our study will examine whether personal values (regarding gender typicality) could be more crucial in parenthood in more recent cohorts.

The present study

Based on past findings, we expect the index of value typicality to reflect a high male typicality profile displaying a high importance of power, achievement, stimulation, hedonism and self-direction (all self-focused values). In turn, low male typicality (thus, high female typicality) should display a high importance of typically female values: benevolence, universalism and, to a lesser extent, conformity, security and tradition (Fors Connolly et al., 2020; Schwartz & Rubel, 2005). As reviewed above, high male typicality (for male and female respondents) could be related to childlessness. In contrast, typical female values, such as social-focused values promoting family formation, are expected to be related to lower chances of childlessness.

As our study is correlational, we do not infer causality. However, we advance our current knowledge by showing whether the association between value typicality and parenthood exists across countries, whether it depends on country context and whether it changes over time. Importantly, we control for well-known variables which have been significantly related to having children, such as age, marital status, educational level, and religiosity (Andersson et al., 2009; Herzer, 2019; Jalovaara et al., 2019; Vasireddy et al., 2023). As requested by the reviewers and the editor, we also included subjective income as a measure of proximal economic situation, which may influence parenthood. We pre-registered the following research questions (available at: https://osf.io/7cags):

Hypothesis 1

A high male typicality is associated with childlessness for men (1a) and women (1b). This, in turn, implies that high female typicality (low male typicality) is associated with having children among women. In contrast, for males, male atypicality (more similar to a female profile) is associated with having children.

Research Question 1

Is the association between male typicality and childlessness the same for men and women? (Do the slopes of male typicality in values predicting (not) having children for men and women mirror each other (null) or not (alternative)?).

Research Question 2

Does country conservatism or religiosity moderate the value (a)typicality-childlessness link?

Research Question 3

Has the association between gender (a)typicality and parenthood/childlessness changed over time?

Methodology

We used data from the ten available rounds of the European Social Survey, from Round 1 (2002) to Round 10 (2020). The ESS data are Time Series Cross-Sectional data representative of the adult population. The ESS is best conceived of as a panel of countries, whereby a sample of individuals from each country is surveyed at each wave (but not the same individuals). For detailed information about the ESS, see https://www.ess.nsd.uib.no. In this study, we used data from 35 countries (all countries with data from at least two rounds) and 155,242 individuals (ranging between 553 and 9075 per country). The missingness rate for individual-level variables included in the analysis was 5.3%, and listwise deletion of cases was applied. We used post-stratification weight, including design weight, in all analyses. The weighted ESS is a representative sample of each country’s population at each wave.

Our study aimed to examine the association between values and parenthood. For our analyses, we included individuals aged 18 to 45, which was assumed to be the most relevant age group to study family formation. Furthermore, those who live with same-sex partners were excluded because the presence of partnerships other than those with different genders may bias the associations between gender typicality and childlessness, both of which are likely to be associated with non-heterosexual orientation (Mittleman, 2022).

Measures

Parenthood

This was indicated based on whether participants had currently or ever ‘any children of your own, step-children, adopted children, foster children or a partner’s children living in your household?’ This variable was coded as 1 = no and 0 = yes, to index childlessness³.

Gender typicality in values

Personal values were measured with the 21-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ21) adapted by Schwartz (2003) for the ESS. Each item describes a different person regarding what is important to him/her. Respondents are asked: ‘How much is this person like you?’ on a scale from 1 – very much like me to 6 – not like me. We recorded responses so that high scores represent greater similarity with the portrait. The 21 items in the PVQ21 were used to compute the ten value types. Two items measure each value, except for Universalism (measured by three items), and these items were averaged to compute the ten values. Reliabilities for the ten ESS values are low (average .53), ranging from .26 for tradition to .68 for achievement ( Sortheix et al., 2019). Please see Supplemental Material 1 for further information on this measure.

To obtain individual-level measures of gender typicality in values, we used a two-stage gender diagnosticity procedure described in detail elsewhere (Lippa & Connelly, 1990; Ilmarinen, 2021; Ilmarinen et al., 2023). In the first stage, we drew a random sample of 100 men and 100 women from each country in each ESS round (n = 49,000) from all participants with available data on values and gender to create a training set. We used elastic net logistic regression analysis with penalisation for coefficient weights to predict participants’ gender (coded as 1 for male and 0 for female typicality; hence, this direction was denominated male typicality) based on each of the ten value scores in this training set. Penalisation was performed via cross-validation across country-round folds (a total of 245 folds). The coefficients were penalised towards zero when their predictive performance was inconsistent across the folds. These penalised coefficients were then used in the testing data (n = 155,242) to measure participants’ male typicality, based on which participants’ gender typicality was calculated according to their gender (i.e. based on the gender and their location on the value male typicality dimension). We obtained the measures by multiplying participants’ raw value scores with the weights obtained from the cross-validated elastic net regression run on a different set of participants. See Figure 2 for a flowchart illustrating the procedure for measuring male typicality (to denote direction).

Figure 2.

Flowchart illustrating the procedure for measuring value typicality (male typicality to denote the direction) across ten rounds of the European Social Survey.

The obtained logit measure can also be transformed to probabilities, from which the direction of the measure becomes more easily understandable: male typicality ranged from 0 to 1 to indicate the probability of the participant being typically male (1) versus typically female (0) based on their value scores. As a deviation from the pre-registered plan, based on the editor and reviewers’ feedback, the scores on the ten values were standardised within-country before the analysis to remove the possibilities of between-country differences in values influencing the value male typicality measure. This did not influence the interpretation of the results. For the main analysis, this variable was centred within countries and scaled with a standard deviation that was pooled across all country-time groups (0.43) to give a measure of male typicality on a standardised scale (M = 0, SD = 0.97, range from −4.56 to 6.45).

Covariates

We included age, measured in years of age, gender (binary coded: −0.5 for females and 0.5 for males), marital status (−0.5 not married and 0.5 married), educational level (measured by years of full-time education in the question: about how many years of education have you completed, whether full-time or part-time? Please report these in full-time equivalents and include compulsory years of schooling), subjective income (measured by feeling about household’s income reverse coded to 1 = very difficult, 2 = difficult, 3 = coping and 4 = living comfortably on present income) and religiosity (How religious are you? Answered from 0 – not religious at all to 10 – very religious).

Country-level variables

Country religiosity

This information was calculated by averaging religiosity at the country level using individuals’ responses to the question: How religious are you? Answered from 0 – not religious at all to 10 – very religious.

Conservative values

We used the country scores on the embeddedness cultural value dimension from Schwartz’s (2006) cultural values dataset. Societies high in embeddedness place relatively more emphasis on values such as respecting traditions and family, obedience, security and maintaining the status quo. Data on country scores is available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304715744_The_7_Schwartz_cultural_value_orientation_scores_for_80_countries

Analyses

Our data was multilevel; individual-level responses (personal values, having children, covariates, level-1) were nested in countries (level-2). Multilevel logistic regression analysis predicted having children at home (outcome) by male typicality, individual-level covariates and country-level variables (religiosity and conservative values) in the lme4-package in R (Bates et al., 2015). The base rate of having children (vs. not) was allowed to vary randomly across countries. To test whether male typicality predicted having children (H1 and H2), a fixed effect term of male typicality on parenthood was examined, allowing this association to vary across countries and co-vary with the base rate if there were no convergence issues. The male typicality scores were centred within countries before analysis to isolate association at the individual level. To test whether the association varied by gender (RQ1), an interaction term between male typicality and gender was included in the model and allowed to vary across countries and co-vary with other random effects. To examine whether the association between male typicality and parenthood varied as a function of country conservatism or religiosity (RQ2), an interaction term with male value typicality and religiosity at the country level and the interaction between value typicality and conservative values were added in the multilevel regressions predicting parenthood. To test whether the association varied by time (RQ3), an interaction term with male typicality and time (ESS round) was examined. If male value typicality was more pronouncedly associated with parenthood in the later ESS rounds, there should be a positive interaction between typicality and time (ESS round). Control variables were included in the final model.

We pre-registered our analyses: https://osf.io/7cags. We determined the effect size of the association between male typicality and childlessness based on our pre-registration and examined it from the odds ratio estimate (OR). Assuming a base rate of 25% childlessness, an OR of 1.1 (log odds b = .095) converts roughly to a point-biserial correlation of r_pb = .05, which was our smallest effect size of interest (sesoi; see also Funder & Ozer, 2019, for justification).

Results

Training data for male value typicality

The male typicality weights obtained from the training data phase showed that all ten values were retained as non-zero predictors of gender. Benevolence showed the strongest unique link with female typicality (−0.25; a negative score indicates a positive weight for being a female), followed by security (−0.18), universalism (−0.07) and tradition (−0.03). The values with positive scores in the typicality index, which indicated a positive score for being male, were power (0.16) and conformity (0.11), followed by stimulation (0.09), achievement (0.09), self-direction (0.08) and hedonism (0.06). The predictive performance of the model (i.e. how well the calculated score predicted the gender of the respondent) on the testing data, as measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, was evaluated using these weights. The average performance across the country-specific datasets in different rounds was 0.62, with a standard deviation of 0.04.

Predicting parenthood (childlessness)

Descriptive information for our sample can be found in Table 1. The mean differences in values between those who had children at home and those who were childless are presented in Supplemental Table S1. Average differences in male typicality (Cohen´s d) between parents and childless individuals averaged over countries for each ESS round (Table S1) and also mean differences for each value type (Tables S1a–S1j).

Table 1.

Sociodemographic characteristics of participants.

	Has children			Childless			Full sample
	n	%	% weighted	n	%	% weighted	n	%	% weighted
Full sample	83,914	54.1	52.1	71,328	45.9	47.9	155,242	100.0	107.2
Female	50,308	60.0	57.3	32,605	45.7	44.1	82,913	53.4	51.0
Male	33,606	40.0	42.7	38,723	54.3	55.9	72,329	46.6	49.0
Married	56,983	67.9	69.6	8359	11.7	11.0	65,342	42.1	41.5
Not married	26,931	32.1	30.4	62,969	88.3	89.0	89,900	57.9	58.5
	Mean	SD	Weighted mean	Mean	SD	Weighted mean	Mean	SD	Weighted mean
Age	36.57	5.98	36.47	27.62	7.23	26.75	32.46	7.95	31.82
Years of education	13.40	3.66	13.21	13.84	3.35	13.67	13.60	3.53	13.43
Subjective income	2.89	0.87	2.88	3.05	0.83	3.05	2.97	0.86	2.96
Religiousness	4.54	3.00	4.57	3.88	2.98	3.91	4.24	3.01	4.25
Value male typicality (P-metric)	0.51	0.10	0.51	0.54	0.10	0.54	0.52	0.10	0.52
Value male typicality (Z-metric)	0.06	0.97	0.07	0.39	0.94	0.40	0.21	0.97	0.23
Value male typicality (Z-metric and country-mean centred)	−0.15	0.97	−0.15	0.18	0.94	0.19	0.00	0.97	0.01

Note. The value male typicality P-metric indicates the probability of being male (range from 0 to 1) calculated from p = exp(logit)/(1+exp(logit)), and Z-metric are logit scores divided by the pooled SD of logit scores across country and time–datasets (0.43).

Results from the multilevel logistic regression model predicting having children are presented in Table 2. A high male value typicality was significantly related to childlessness (Log odds estimate = 0.15, 95% CI [0.12, 0.18], p < .001). The interaction between male value typicality and gender was significant. Supporting our pre-registered hypothesis 1a, high male typicality was associated with childlessness among women (OR = 1.26, 95% CI [1.22, 1.31], p < .001). In reverse, this shows that women with low male typicality (and, therefore, high female typicality) had higher chances of having children.

Table 2.

Results from multilevel logistic regression analysis predicting childlessness.

	Model 1			Model 2			Model 3
Fixed effects	b	ci	p	b	ci	p	b	ci	p
base rate	−3.31	[−3.50, −3.13]	<.001	−3.28	[−3.46, −3.10]	<.001	−3.28	[−3.45, −3.10]	<.001
Gender	0.79	[0.76, 0.82]	<.001	0.74	[0.71, 0.77]	<.001	0.76	[0.68, 0.84]	<.001
Married	−2.41	[−2.44, −2.38]	<.001	−2.41	[−2.44, −2.38]	<.001	−2.41	[−2.44, −2.38]	<.001
Education	0.33	[0.31, 0.35]	<.001	0.33	[0.31, 0.34]	<.001	0.32	[0.31, 0.34]	<.001
Religiousness	−0.01	[−0.03, 0.00]	.092	−0.00	[−0.02, 0.01]	.801	−0.00	[−0.02, 0.01]	.730
Age	−3.17	[−3.21, −3.13]	<.001	−3.13	[−3.17, −3.09]	<.001	−3.14	[−3.18, −3.10]	<.001
Subjective income	0.30	[0.28, 0.31]	<.001	0.29	[0.27, 0.30]	<.001	0.29	[0.27, 0.31]	<.001
ESS round	0.02	[0.01, 0.02]	<.001	0.02	[0.01, 0.03]	<.001	0.02	[0.01, 0.03]	<.001
Value male typicality				0.15	[0.12, 0.18]	<.001	0.15	[0.13, 0.18]	<.001
Gender × value male typicality							−0.17	[−0.20, −0.13]	<.001
Random effects	SD			SD			SD
base rate	0.53			0.53			0.52
Value male typicality				0.06			0.05
Gender							0.21
Gender × value male typicality							0.06

Note. b = log odds estimate. CI = 95% confidence interval. Gender coded as −0.5 = female and 0.5 for male. Married coded as −0.5 = not married and 0.5 married. Education, age, religiousness, and income are standardised. ESS round coded as ESS round – 5.5. Random effect correlations are excluded from the table.

The association between male typicality and childlessness was also positive for men (OR = 1.07, CI [1.04, 1.10], p < .001), but this association was statistically non-significantly stronger than the pre-registered minimum effect size OR = 1.1, p = .969, and therefore was statistically equivalent to the practically meaningless range of ORs [0.91, 1.10], p = .031, failing to provide strong support for hypothesis 1b. These results are shown in Figure 3. Both prediction slopes were adjusted for the covariates and estimated based on the full random effect model (See Table 2). Covariates (age, religiosity, marriage, education years and subjective income) did reduce the zero-order associations substantially, but these associations remained. At the extremes, women who scored very high on male-typical values were, on average, predicted to be almost equally likely to be childless or to have a child, whereas, for extremely female-typical women, the probability of having a child was, on average, around 80%. The pattern for men was notably weaker than for women. The difference between the slopes for men and women was statistically significant, OR = 0.85, 95% CI [0.82, 0.88], p < .001, and this slope disparity was meaningful in magnitude (statistically non-equivalent to OR [0.91, 1.10] range).

Figure 3.

The association between male value typicality and childlessness for women and men (adjusted for covariates). The x-axis displays the probability of a participant of being male typical (vs. female typical, negative pole) in values which was centred within countries and scaled with pooled standard deviation to give a measure of male typicality on a standardised scale (M = 0, SD = 0.97, range from −4.56 to 6.45). The y-axis depicts the probability of being childless (0–1).

To examine RQ2 on the role of country-level conservative values and religiosity, we tested whether country levels of conservative values and religiosity predicted differences in the strength of male typicality in the prediction of childlessness. Country-level conservatism did not moderate the association between value male typicality and childlessness, OR = 0.99, 95% CI [0.96, 1.02], p = .394, with statistical equivalence in the range of OR [0.91, 1.10], p < .001, hence, considered not significant. Exploring the moderation by country-level conservatism further by gender showed a slight disparity for this moderated association, OR = 1.04, 95% CI [1.00, 1.07], p = .046, but this association was also statistically equivalent to the OR [0.91, 1.10] range, p < .001. In sum, country-level conservatism did not moderate the association in meaningful ways.

Country-level religiosity did not predict variability in the overall association between male typicality and childlessness (OR = 0.98, 95% CI [0.96, 1.01], p = .118, equivalent to [0.91, 1.10], p < .001). We further explored whether there would be a disparity in how country-level religiosity moderated the association for women and men. However, as examined from the three-way interaction between male typicality, gender and country-level religiosity (OR = 1.04, 95% CI [1.00, 1.08], p = .030, this disparity was statistically equivalent to OR [0.91, 1.10], p < .001.

Our last research question (RQ3) asked whether the association between gender(a)typicality and parenthood/childlessness had changed over time (from 2002 to 2020). Results are presented in Supplemental Table S2. Time did not significantly moderate the association between male typicality and childlessness (for 18-year increment: OR = 0.97, CI [0.93, 1.03], p = .335). This temporal stability in the association was also not significantly moderated by gender (for 18-year increment: OR = 1.01, CI [0.91, 1.12], p = .893). That is, the association between male typicality and childlessness has not shown significant change between 2002 and 2020 for either men or women in Europe.

The direct effect of time on childlessness examined from a separate random effect model without covariates (see Supplemental Table S3) showed that time was associated with childlessness, OR (per increment of 2 years, or 1 ESS round) = 1.05, CI [1.03, 1.06], p < .001. If we compare the strength of this linear trend over the entire period, 18 years, then these odds ratios are = 1.51, CI [1.33, 1.72] showing a significant increase in childlessness over the longer period. However, the association between time and childlessness is non-significant in the model including covariates (time model 3 in Table S3), indicating that some of the covariates are time-varying and also covarying with childlessness.

Exploratory results

Interestingly, we noted that the random effects of value typicality varied by country. Please see Figure 4 for country – and gender-specific posterior model-based estimates to visualise the differential effects of value typicality for men and women across countries. As seen in Figure 4, there seemed to be a tendency for Nordic countries to have a large random effect. Given that Nordic countries had been an example of maintaining high fertility but experienced a dramatic and unexplained drop in fertility in the last decade (Rahnu & Jalovaara, 2023), they represent an interesting case. We post hoc tested to see if the association between male typicality and childlessness was stronger in the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland) than in other countries. Results showed that the overall association between male typicality and childlessness was not significantly different in Nordic than in other countries.

Figure 4.

Associations between value male typicality and childlessness in countries participating in European Social Survey rounds 1 to 10. Overall associations in black circles, associations for men in dark green circles (left) and associations for women in light violet circles (right).

We also explored whether the association between male value typicality and childlessness differed by age for review purposes. Before running the model, which included all the covariates and in which the associations of value male typicality, age and their interaction were allowed to vary between countries, the age variable was centred within countries and then standardised using its standard deviation (7.93). The association between value male typicality and childlessness varied by age, OR = 0.94, 95% CI [0.92, 0.97], p < .001. However, this moderated association fell within the OR [0.91, 1.10] range, p = .006, and was therefore considered practically meaningless. Further exploring the marginal effects, these indicated a somewhat stronger association among younger (mean-1SD ∼ approximately 24 year-olds), OR = 1.23, 95% CI [1.18, 1.28], p < .001, as compared to average (approximately 32 year-olds), OR = 1.15, 95% CI [1.12, 1.19], p < .001, than for older (mean+1SD ∼ approximately 40 year-olds), OR = 1.09, 95% [1.05, 1.13], p < .001) participants. In a model that further explored the variation in the male typicality-childlessness association by age separately for women and men (again allowing for all random effects), no differences were found between men and women in these associations, OR = 1.02, 95% CI [0.97, 1.07], p = .510.

Robustness analyses

As requested in the review process, we ran some additional analyses. To examine the plausible influence of these country-specific misspecifications, we rerun the main analysis without countries that had at least one mis-specified regression coefficient (Albania 2, Belgium 1, Cyprus 1, Denmark 1, Finland 2, France 2, Greece 1, Iceland 3, Italy 1, Luxemburg 3, Macedonia 3, Netherlands 1, Poland 1, Serbia 1 and Kosovo 2). These analyses were similar to those reported in the main text in other aspects (including income-variable, pre-standardisation and training-test split). See Supplemental Analyses 1.

We also ran the models using the 21 items for values instead of the 10 value types to calculate our measure of gender value typicality (male typicality). As expected, there was an increase in the predictive utility of 21 items instead of the 10 values. The mean AUC (https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-auc-roc-curve-68b2303cc9c5) was .66 with an SD of .04 across country-time groups. The main results with item-level value male typicality were largely in line with those obtained with 10 values, although somewhat stronger. See Supplemental Analyses 2.

Discussion

Are gender-typical values linked to parenthood? Our results showed that in line with our pre-registered hypotheses, a high typical male profile in terms of Schwartz´s (1992) ten values was related to childlessness for women and, although the effect was weaker, also for men. In turn, men and women were more likely to raise and support a child if they had high female-typical values. These associations held above the effect of well-known predictors of parenthood such as marital status, educational level, income and religiosity. In comparison, if we consider the typical values for each gender separately, being ‘gender-typical’ in values had opposite effects for men and women: female typicality was positively linked to parenthood for female participants. In contrast, male typicality in values had a negative link to parenthood for male participants (although this second association did not reach the established significance cut-off).

Our finding supports the idea that values (Schwartz, 1992) and goals may drive an individual towards or away from establishing a family (Brandtstädter, 1984; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 1997). Our study adds to this literature by demonstrating that values that support family formation are gendered and being gender-typical in values has the opposite pattern for men and women: women who are female-typical in values have high chances of having children, while males with typical male values tend to have low chances of having children.

The fact that male-typical values had a stronger effect on women than men is interesting as women have more freedom to decide whether to have children or not (if they biologically can) than men. This could also be linked to past findings; for instance, the effect of agreeableness (a trait related to self-transcendence values) was significant only for female fertility but not for men in an Australian study (Whyte et al., 2019). Also, our results align with recent longitudinal evidence on goals showing that women with agentic goals tended to end up childless (Wehner et al., 2022).

Regarding the contextual effects of country-level conservatism and religiosity, we found no overall moderation in the link between value typicality and childlessness. Typical female values could support traditional gender attitudes – beliefs about the appropriate roles of men and women in society (including their roles in the family and becoming a mother) (Davis & Greenstein, 2009). We considered that male-typical women could be penalised and perceived as too competitive – being power-oriented, and even more so in traditional contexts – but our results did not support this. This idea, however, needs further research and could be studied, for instance, by focussing on different cultural values and individual-country value congruence and fertility.

We found that time did not increase the effect of gender typicality on parenthood. This was so despite childbearing in contemporary wealthier countries being suggested to be less influenced by economic necessities and more by individual partner characteristics such as personality traits. Our results do not show a significant difference in the association between value typicality and having children in time. This does not align with the idea that certain personality traits would be increasingly important, such as neuroticism for men’s fertility in Norway (Skirbekk & Blekesaune, 2014). Jokela (2012) did not find cohort effects for the effects of personality traits on fertility either. However, women’s high conscientiousness emerged as a negative predictor of fertility in younger birth cohorts only. The lack of significant changes in the associations between values and parenthood could be due to the high stability of values and the fact that we combined information on all values into a single score. Further research could take into account even longer periods and specific values.

Practical implications and limitations

Our results showing that women with male-typical values are very likely to be childless align with previous findings that most childless persons are work-centred, valuing competition, achievement orientation and power. It is essential to highlight that this goes for both women and men (although weakly). A study among highly educated participants reported that childless women had responses to value questions that were more similar to those of men than those of women with children (Ferriman et al., 2009).

While the socioeconomic differences in family formation have become more similar for men and women, even in the egalitarian Nordic countries, the labour market consequences of parenthood remain more unfavourable for women (Jalovaara & Fasang, 2020), which could lead more achievement-oriented women away from motherhood. The difficulty in reconciling these two values, having a successful career and having a family, still needs to be addressed, as inequality in earnings between men and women, particularly with traditional life pathways (i.e. married with children), remains large even in the Nordic countries (Jalovaara & Fasang, 2020).

Again, we emphasise that male typicality does not refer to having the mean values of the group. These are not prototypical group members (in the sense of endorsing the average values) but rather those who hold extreme scores on those values where males, on average, score higher/lower than women (e.g. power and achievement/benevolence and universalism). For men, being gender-typical in values hinders their likelihood of having children. Hence, further research could examine the correlates and predictors of high male typicality. The measure of value typicality used in this study was not fully predictive of participants’ gender (0.62), but this is in line with past studies using similar measures (see, for instance, Ilmarinen et al., 2023). Importantly, if some or most values showed no differences between men and women, the measure would be poor: most individuals would have probabilities of .49–.51 for either gender. The same would happen if the correlations between the values were extremely high and the gender differences were minuscule.

The limitations of the current study need to be acknowledged. As mentioned in the introduction, our study does not allow us to infer causality. However, we used value typicality as a predictor because values have proved very stable throughout the life course (Milfont et al., 2016; Vecchione et al., 2016) and, even if affected by large events, they tend to return to previous levels (Sortheix et al., 2019). So, it is theoretically valid to argue that the direction goes from values to family formation. However, men and women who were already parents may emphasise existing sex differences by shifting further towards typically female values through socialisation effects (Lönnqvist et al., 2018), which could enlarge the value difference between them and childless participants. However, goal selection effects towards parenthood were stronger than socialisation effects (Wehner et al., 2022). Our study design does not allow us to ascertain the direction or compare the direction of effects between values and parenthood. Future longitudinal studies are needed to assess further the direction between values and goals (for an exception, see Lönnqvist et al., 2018).

This study uses only European samples; further studies should include more diverse countries. Another limitation of the ESS data is that it does not differentiate whether the children in the household are their own, adopted or fostered. The rationale in the study proposing that values underlie the desire and decision to have or raise children applies to all these situations. We used a novel measure to assess value typicality based on a composite, but further research could examine the influence of each value separately and in tandem to determine what drives the relationships. We also limited our sample to 18–45 years, but in practice, older adults could also raise children after the age of the study. Finally, we also acknowledge that the relatively short measure of values in ESS does not necessarily allow for maximising predictive utility. Longer and more broadly measured value and personality questionnaires could be used to improve the predictive utility of male/female typicality measurement. However, the equivalence of the regressions must also be examined in cross-cultural, cross-time designs like this one, which might be challenging if more items are included.

As our results are merely correlational, we cannot uncover whether women and men with male-typical values are socially penalised (and do not get children despite that they would want to) or these individuals choose to follow other life paths, for example, focus on careers and not have children. Thus, longitudinal studies are needed. However, for men, there are fewer reasons to believe they would be socially penalised or would not choose to have a family because of career costs (as most of the costs go for women). Finally, although ESS samples are representative in many ways (e.g. gender, age, education and nationality), the samples are nonetheless based on voluntary participation. As such, they are non-random (i.e. self-selective). Thus, any generalisations should be cautious.

Conclusion

Female-typical values emphasising caring and maintaining social relations are important for family formation for men and women. In the context of excessive market competition, social media offers seemingly endless competing lifestyle alternatives (Savelieva et al., 2023; Tammisalo & Rotkirch, 2022; Vignoli et al., 2020), and a value orientation towards self-focus is higher among new generations (Leijen et al., 2022). Our results suggest that individuals prioritising male-typical values (with a high self-focus) are less likely to have children at home. However, longitudinal studies are needed to ascertain the direction of the associations reported here.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Gender and values in 20 years of the European Social Survey: Are gender-typical values linked to parenthood?

Supplemental Material for Gender and values in 20 years of the European Social Survey: Are gender-typical values linked to parenthood? by Florencia M Sortheix, Rasmus Mannerström, Ville-Juhani Ilmarinen and Katariina Salmela-Aro in European Journal of Personality.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the FLUX project, funded by the Strategic Research Council (decision numbers 364374 and 364376), and by the Academy of Finland research grant 338891 to V.-J.I.

Open science statement

This article’s study materials, data and analysis scripts can be accessed at https://github.com/vjilmari/values_parenthood. Pre-registration for hypotheses and analysis plans can be accessed at

ORCID iDs

Florencia M Sortheix

Ville-Juhani Ilmarinen

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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