Traditional or egalitarian? Parenthood, gender attitudes, and part-time work among Dutch men

The Netherlands has been described as a part-time economy, but there are few men who choose to work part-time. A male breadwinner-model prevails, yet part-time work among men has become more common the past few decades. Previous research on part-time work has mainly focused on the implications it has for women and the legal status and quality of part-time jobs in the Netherlands. I used data from the 10th wave of the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences (LISS) panel to investigate the difference in propensity to work part-time between fathers and childless men, and to examine whether gender attitudes affect working hours. Fathers were found to be more likely to work full-time than childless men. Also, results suggest that men's gender attitudes play no role in accounting for differences in working-time arrangements between men with and without children. Rather than gender attitudes, traditional gender specialization seemed to account for the longer working hours of fathers compared with childless men.