The level of satisfaction with life after becoming a parent: gender differentiation

1. The level of satisfaction with life after becoming a parent:gender differentiation  Fulbright English Pre-academic Course 2008 OPIE

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

3. Overview • Introduction • Background • Research Question • Methodology • Results • Conclusions • Acknowledgments • Questions

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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?

7. 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

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

9. Main Goals Research • 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 Survey Analyses

10. 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. 7 main priorities 0 – 100%

12. Participants 38.5% Males Females 65.5% Gender

15. Distinctions in rank of priorities in life by gender

19. 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.

20. 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

22. 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.

24. Thank you for attention Questions?