Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Mother Like Mothers and Work Like Fathers: U.S. Heterosexual College Students’ Assumptions About Who Should Meet Childcare and Housework Demands
Originally published 2021-10-28 · Sex Roles
Springer Science and Business Media LLC · DOI 10.1007/s11199-021-01252-3 ↗
Workplace evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Examines assumptions about who should solve childcare and household demands, offering workplace-applied insight into gendered expectations before parenthood.
Examines workers, organizations or AI at work. Participants are not necessarily parents; family benefits are not established by this evidence alone.
Editorial reading guide · Collaboration
Whose responsibility do we assume childcare is before a family even asks for help?
Examines assumptions about who should solve childcare and household demands, offering workplace-applied insight into gendered expectations before parenthood.
Study context
176 heterosexual US college students, predominantly European American, discussing future family and work roles.
Age / stage: Young adults; mean age 20.57 years, not a sample of working parents.
Read with three questions
- How did respondents discuss a mother’s choice to work?
- What assumptions were contained in describing fathers as helping with chores?
- How do students’ hypothetical expectations differ from working parents’ actual arrangements?
Keep the limits in view
This is an attitude study of a relatively homogeneous student sample, not evidence of employer practice or an intervention with parents; workplace application is interpretive.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Annie McConnon; Allegra J Midgette; Clare Conry-Murray (2021). Mother Like Mothers and Work Like Fathers: U.S. Heterosexual College Students’ Assumptions About Who Should Meet Childcare and Housework Demands Sex Roles. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-021-01252-3
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.