Like My Mother Before Me: Gender and Cross-Gender Effects on Status Attainment during Modernization

Abstract

In social inequality research, the impact of mothers’ position on the transmission of family resources to children is often neglected. We ask what the effects of mothers’ and fathers’ status were on their sons’ and daughters’ status attainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Netherlands, and how these effects changed over time. We use occupational information in marriage record data to investigate the status of 465,790 sons and 157,967 daughters. Mothers’ occupational and employment status mattered for both sons’ and daughters’ status attainment. Over time, the gender-specific influence of parental status on children’s status remained stable, while the cross-gender impact of parental status on daughters’ status attainment increased.