THE LEVEL OF SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AFTER BECOMING A PARENT: GENDER DIFFERENTIATION Fulbright English Pre-academic Course 2008 OPIE

Institutional Affiliation - Ohio University Names of authors Pavlo Bohutskiy – UkraineGwendoline Nyambi– Cameroon Svitlana Volkova – Ukraine

Overview  Introduction  Background  Research Question  Methodology  Results  Conclusions  Acknowledgments  Questions

Background Cook et al, 1982: –Attitudes towards marriage on the increase  The idea that “marriage without children is not fully complete'' –Attitudes towards having children on the decrease Preference given to other priorities in life: –career, money making, fun, self denial

Transition to the parenthood The change of married couple to parenthood is considered a “critical role transition point” –Aldous, 1978 Some authors present the transition to parenthood as a usual event that can easily be predicted and managed –Charting Parenthood, 2002 It proves the fact that both personal and marital stress increase after becoming a parent

Multicultural Health Communication Centre, June 2003: –Research also shows that parenthood could be a reason of feelings like: anger, stress, guilt, confusion, and anxiety Influence on life satisfaction?

Gender roles Gender role attitudes shape parental attitudes differentially for men and women  Bernhartdt & Goldscheider, 2006 Orientation towards transitions to fatherhood : –Coltrane, 1996 –Nielsen, 1999

Research Question Do males and females report different levels of life satisfaction after becoming parents?

Main Goals  To define changes in life attitudes in female and male after becoming a parents  To evaluate changes in life preferences before and after parenthood  To prove or deny the hypothesis of gender influence on peoples’ life satisfaction after parenthood Research Survey Analyses

Methodology: Questionnaire General information: –gender, age, country and number of children. Before parenthood: –rank of life priorities –scale of time spent on those activities; –level of life satisfaction. After parenthood: –rank of life priorities –scale of time spent on those activities; –level of life satisfaction. 0 – 100% 7 main priorities Not SatisfiedVery Satisfied

Main categories of life attitude Money Making CareerSport/HealthFamilyFriends Self- Improvement Other

Participants Males Females Gender 38.5%65.5% AgeFemalesMales Response Percent <2531.3%50.0% %20.0% >3025.0%30.0% Amount of children FemalesMales Response Percent %70.0% %20.0% >2 12.5%10.0%

Distinctions in rank of priorities in life by gender

Conclusions from figures: there are no direct relation between the ranking of priorities and time spent for the specific activity For male: – the level of priority in per cent for such activities as sport/health, friends, career and self improvement are high then the per cent of time spent for these actions; the level of priority in per cent for activities such as family and money making is less than the per cent of time spent.

Conclusions from figures: For female: – the level of priority in per cent for such activities as sport/health, friends and self improvement are high then the per cent of time spent for these actions; the level of priority in per cent for activities such as family is less than the per cent of time spent. The gap between priorities and time spent for male is 1.7 time more than for female

Conclusions Birth of a child makes females feel less satisfied in life in contrast to male who feel more satisfied. Before becoming a parent females have opportunities to spent more time for such activities as: –as money making and career, what make them feel more independent and self-confident; –part of females has to combine motherhood and work, or part time work.

Thank you for attention Questions?