46
Abstract: The article presents a test of Catherine Hakim’s preference theory in the Czech
environment. Using data from a representative survey of Czech women between the ages of
20 and 40 the authors ﬁrst test to what extent Czech women conform to the typology of homecentred,
work-centred and adaptive women. In the second part of the article the authors test
whether this typology is a good predictor of Czech fertility and whether it inﬂuences the
attitudes of Czech women on family policy measures.
Keywords: preference theory, fertility, family models, family policies, work
HAKIM’S PREFERENCE THEORY
IN THE CZECH CONTEXT*)
LADISLAV RABUŠIC – BEATRICE-ELENA CHROMKOVÁ MANEA**)
In 2002 the ‘preference theory’ proposed by the British sociologist Catherine Hakim ﬁrst
appeared in literature mapping the causes of low fertility in modern developed countries. She
presented the theory in a series of articles and books (see, e.g., Hakim, 2000, 2003a, 2003b),
and it sparked off considerable interest. In the preference theory, Hakim tries to explain women’s
lifestyle preferences based on their participation in the labour market, indicating whether
their preferences steer them towards employment and building a career at work, or whether
they are drawn more towards having a family and raising children. Hakim interprets lifestyle
as a factor that can have a signiﬁcant impact on women’s fertility1)
.
The preference theory puts forth a typology of women based on their relationship to family
and paid work. Hakim distinguishes three types of women based on lifestyle preferences:
I. Home-centred women, who prefer to devote themselves to the family and household and
tend to have larger families; they only seek work if it is necessary to maintain the family
budget.
II. Work-centred women, who realise themselves more through work than through family;
they form a kind of counterpart to the preceding type.
III. Adaptive women, who try to combine their work at the workplace and at home; they are
a kind of mixture of types I and II.
Hakim’s typology was empirically tested using the theory’s indicators in representative
studies of the populations of Great Britain and Spain. The empirical data from these studies
produce a normal distribution curve and show that 20% of women are home-centred, 60%
adaptive, and 20% work-centred (Hakim, 2000: 6). According to Hakim, an important feature
of this typology should be that women in each lifestyle type are inclined to have a different
number of children. In Hakim’s view, this fact should make it possible to predict the reproductive
behaviour of women in relation to the social and family policy of the state.
In this context Hakim draws attention to an error often committed by politicians when introducing
measures designed to increase fertility in the country. Women with different lifestyle
preferences respond differently to family and population policy measures, and that usu-
*)
This article was published in Demograﬁe 2007, 49, p. 77–86. The contents of the journal are published on the
website of the Czech Statistical Ofﬁce at: http://www.czso.cz/csu/redakce.nsf/i/demograﬁe.
**)
Direct all correspondence to: Prof. PhDr. Ladislav Rabušic, CSc., Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies,
Masaryk Univesity, Joštova 10, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic, rabu@fss.muni.cz; Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea,
M.A. Institut for Studies on Social Reproduction and Integration, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova
10, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic, manea@fss.muni.cz.
1)
We have already presented the preference theory in more detail elsewhere, in Manea, Mrázová and Rabušic (2006).
Ladislav Rabušic – Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea: Hakim’s Preference Theory in the Czech Context
47
ally prevents the measures from achieving their intended outcome2)
. For example, home-centred
women should respond to changes in the state’s ﬁscal policy. If the state ﬁscal policy reduces
the tax burden on families with children women in this lifestyle type tend to have a
large family and stay at home with the children. The situation is different in the case of adaptive
women, who respond to policies or programmes aimed at helping them achieve a worklife
balance. Work-centred women are not sensitive to any family or population policies.
What is most important for them are policies directed at combating discrimination on the basis
of gender, race, or marital status.
The objective of this article is to determine whether the preference theory also applies to
the Czech Republic and speciﬁcally to the population of Czech women. Three basic research
questions can be drawn from the preference theory, and they are the subject of our analyses
here: 1) First we will ask whether the same distribution of individual types of women can be
found in the Czech Republic as Hakim found in her data; 2) We will verify whether there are
signiﬁcant differences by lifestyle type between the approaches women take to fertility; 3) Finally,
we will determine whether there are differences by lifestyle type between the way
women view individual measures in Czech family policy.
Methodology
These three research questions are analysed using data from a sociological survey carried
out in the Czech Republic at the end of 2005. The research agency SC & C collected the data
by administering a standardised questionnaire to a random sample of the population made up
of women between the ages of 20 and 40 and also their husband or partner if they shared the
same household; the age of the men was not limited. If the woman lived alone and was in the
deﬁned age group she was included in the sample. If the interviewers came across a man between
the ages of 20 and 40 and living alone, he was administered a male questionnaire and
also included in the sample. Data was collected from a total of 2546 respondents. In this article,
for obvious reasons, we will be focusing just on the sub-sample of women made up of
1284 respondents.
Formulating a relevant typology was of key importance in this analysis. This was done in
cooperation with Hakim by using her set of questions (see the Appendix). Home-centred
women are deﬁned as women who selected the third response under question H5 and for
whom work is not their focal interest. Work-centrality was determined on the basis of questions
H4 and H6. Work-centred women are women who would continue to work even if the
family income was high enough to allow them to remain at home (the ﬁrst response to question
H4) and who are the main source or contribute equally with their husband/partner to
household income (the ﬁrst or third response to question H6). Work-centred women are those
who selected the ﬁrst response under question H5 and for whom work is their focal interest
(based on work-centrality). Adaptive women are those who do not fall into either one of the
two types.
Findings
Hakim’s typology in the Czech Republic
Table 1 shows the distribution of women according to individual lifestyle preferences. It
also presents similar data for Great Britain and Spain drawn from Hakim’s publication. The
comparison of Czech data with foreign data is not ideal, as Hakim worked with data for a different
age group of women, but the table does provide a kind of illustrative comparison.
2)
It is a question whether her emphasis on the woman as the key element in determining the ultimate number of children
is not perhaps somewhat erroneous. Hakim claims that ‘romantics wanted to believe that couples decide together
how many children they have, but in reality just one of the partners always has the decisive word’ (2003a: 369).
And in this she has the woman in mind.
Czech Demography, 2008, Vol. 2
48
Like in the two other countries in the comparison, the Czech distribution of lifestyle preferences
is relatively normal, but somewhat high. This means that the middle variant is larger than it should
be for an ideal distribution. However, the share of adaptive women is also much higher than the
other two types. There is a somewhat larger share of home-centred women (16%) in the Czech
sample than work-centred women (13%), but the difference, though statistically signiﬁcant at
0,05, is negligible. However, these shares are turned around in the sub-sample of employed women,
where work-centred women make up the larger share. In the sub-sample of married women
(which made up 49% of the sample) the share of adaptive women is very high, at 75%.
The Czech typological distribution is more or less similar to those seen in Great Britain and
Spain. Given that these three countries have considerably different economic, social and cultural
landscapes, this ﬁnding would suggest that there is a universal validity to Hakim’s typology,
as it has been empirically conﬁrmed in three diverse cultures. However, the problem is
that it is hard to accept this typological distribution because when the absolute majority of
cases in every country fall into the middle category we have to wonder if this concept is being
operationalised properly. We will return to this question in the ﬁnal part of this article.
What characteristics are relevant to each type of lifestyle preference? Table 2 shows that
among Czech women there is a link between typology and education: the best-educated
women are more often work-centred women, while the least-educated women are more often
home-centred women. Subjective class ranking works similarly: the higher the subjective
class ranking the larger the share of work-centred women and the lower the share of homecentred
women. We also found that women who were employed at the time of the research
were more often work-centred than unemployed women, who, based on their responses, also
more often belonged to the home-centred type of women. A woman’s religious orientation
did not play any role in the typology, though it could have been assumed that women with
strong religious convictions would be more inclined to be the home-centred type3)
. The older
women (aged 30-40) were typologically more work-centred than the younger women in the
sample. Widowed and divorced women were also more work-centred than other marital status
categories. In relation to the number of children a woman has, women with more than
three children were most often the home-centred type4)
.
Table 1 National distributions of lifestyle preference among women, Czech Republic, Great Britain and Spain, in %
Source: Authors’ calculations for the Czech Republic from a data file from the MPR 2005; for Great Britain and Spain, Hakim (2003b: 85).
Country Home-centred women Adaptive women Work-centred women
Czech Republic
Women aged 20–40 years 16 70 13
Working women 14 69 17
Married women aged 20–40 years 14 75 11
United Kingdom
Women aged 16–64 years 14 71 15
Working women 11 72 17
Married women aged 20–59 years 13 77 10
Spain
Women aged 18–64 years 14 71 15
Working women 5 67 28
Married women aged 20–59 years 15 73 12
3)
Understandably there is a relatively strong correlation between the education of the respondent and her subjective
self-classiﬁcation (Goodman-Kruskal gamma for ordinal data is = +0,66; p < 0.001).
4)
More than one-half of the women in our sample worked full time, 11% were at home, 7% were unemployed, and
5% worked part time.
49
Ladislav Rabušic – Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea: Hakim’s Preference Theory in the Czech Context
Given that the bivariance relations in Table 2 may conceal some apparent or even false associations,
we also included these variables in a multinomial logistic regression. The ﬁndings
from the regression are not presented here, as the regression model does not reproduce the
data satisfactorily and adds no additional information that could not be drawn already from
the tables of second-order categorisation – the variables used do not inﬂuence differences in
preferences and the odds ratios come out statistically insigniﬁcant.
We tested the typology’s validity by relating it to questions examining a similar phenomenon
but formulated differently than the questions used to create the typology. If the typology
is valid the answers should break down logically into consistent categories. Table 3 shows
that this is the case. In all the statements (except statement 8) the views of home-centred
women are genuinely much more pro-family than the views of work-centred women, while
adaptive women (though not in such a clear-cut manner) always ranked in the centre5)
. From
this perspective, Hakim’s typology differentiates in the Czech context as intended.
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Note: *Four-item scale; here only the extreme ﬁelds are presented.
Table 2 Lifestyle preferences among women aged 20–40 in the Czech Republic by various socio-demographic
characteristics, in %
Indicator Work-centred women Adaptive women Home-centred women
Age group 20–29 11 73 16
30–40 16 68 16
Education Basic 10 59 31
Secondary vocational/
Secondary without maturita
11 71 18
Secondary with maturita 14 73 13
University 26 59 15
Marital status Married 11 75 14
Widowed 25 47 27
Divorced 22 63 15
Separation of spouses 0 73 27
Single 13 67 19
Operate position4)
Employed 17 69 14
Unemployed 6 71 23
Current number of children Childless 14 69 17
1 child 14 71 16
2 children 14 72 14
3+ children 9 66 25
The role of religion in life* Important 13 72 14
Unimportant 14 70 17
Subjective class Low/working class 13 65 22
Lower-middle class 10 74 16
Middle 15 71 15
Upper-middle/upper class 24 66 10
Total 13 70 16
5)
Czech feminists will probably be somewhat disappointed by attitudes to statement no. 1. A full 47% of women
aged 20–40 agreed with this statement, and only 26% disagreed.
Czech Demography, 2008, Vol. 2
50
To sum up in response to our ﬁrst question, in the Czech Republic Hakim’s typology has
a distribution similar to that in some other countries. The majority of women in the Czech Republic
also fall into the adaptive category: in their responses to the questions these women
hesitated over whether they clearly favoured work and their job or whether they were more
strongly inclined towards the family. The typology of women by lifestyle preferences proved
valid as a predictor of opinions on the roles of men and women in the family and the relationship
between the family and employment. The individual types of women based on Hakim’s
guidelines held the views it was assumed they would.
Does this typological differentiation have an effect on women’s fertility? According to
Hakim’s theory, it should have, and we have data that will allow us to answer this question.
Hakim’s typology and fertility
The second question we are addressing in this article is whether the three types of women
we deﬁned also have signiﬁcantly different fertility rates. The women included in the sample
are at an age where many of them still have their reproductive life before them, while others
have already completed their fertility. To address this, we used a variable that we called “hypothetical”
(or expected) completed fertility. As its name suggests, it is similar to the demographic
concept of completed fertility, but we calculated it as a sum of the number of children
that the respondent has and the number of children that she would like to have in the future.
The resulting datum summing up how many children a woman will probably have in her lifetime
is thus a construct that is compiled out of already existing components (the actual
number of children a woman has) and expected components (the planned number of children),
which means it is not a certainty and is therefore referred to as “hypothetical”.
As the data in Table 4 show, we must (unfortunately and with regret) conﬁrm that Hakim’s
typology has little effect on the hypothetical completed fertility (HCF) of Czech women. In
the 20–29 age group the HCF of home-centred women is the lowest of all three types (1,64),
even though we ought to expect the reverse. While it is true that the difference between opposite
types of women is small (though statistically signiﬁcant, as the dispersion analysis
demonstrated, so it can be expected to be found even in the basic sample), it is oriented in the
“wrong” direction. The sequential correlation between the typology and the HCF, measured
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Note: *Opinions on these statements were measured on a ﬁve-point Likert scale; the responses “wholly agree” and “agree” were
merged for presentation in this table.
Table 3 Opinions on gender roles, work and family by lifestyle preferences in the Czech Republic, answers“agree”, in %
Statement
Work-centred
women
Adaptive
Home-centred
women
Total “agree”
abs. %
1. It is the man’s job to earn money, and a woman’s job to look after the
household and the family’
23 47 64 590 47
2. Working mothers can have just as close a relationship with their children
and given them the same sense of security as mothers who don’t work
91 78 72 978 79
3. A woman can derive the same satisfaction from being a homemaker as
she can from working
16 26 39 333 27
4. Working is a good thing, but what most women really want is a home
and a family
43 63 65 744 61
5. Women want to have both a family and children 92 84 65 1013 82
6. Working is so demanding on men today that they don’t have time to
devote to their family
22 38 40 455 36
7. Today families who want to have children have to share the task
of caring for the children much more than before
74 64 60 817 65
8. Fathers are as well-equipped to care for their children as mothers are 52 46 47 594 47
51
Ladislav Rabušic – Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea: Hakim’s Preference Theory in the Czech Context
as a gamma coefﬁcient, is very small and statistically insigniﬁcant (0,16; p > 0,05)6)
. In the
30-40 age group the highest HCF is observed among adaptive women (1,92) followed by
family-centred women (1,89), and work-centred women have the lowest HCF (1,76). The differences
are of course very small, and moreover statistically insigniﬁcant, which means that
the three types will not be different in the Czech Republic. The sequential correlation is almost
zero and it is statistically insigniﬁcant (0,06; p > 0,05).
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Note:I)
CNCH – current number of children (mean);II)
NOCH – number of other children (mean);III)
HCF – hypothetical completed
fertility.
Table 4 Fertility indicators by age groups and Hakim’s typology in the Czech Republic – mean number of children
Age group
Work-centred women Adaptive Home-centred women
CNCHI)
NOCHII)
HCFIII)
CNCH NOCH HCF CNCH NOCH HCF
20–29 let 1.38 1.68 1.82 1.45 1.73 1.88 1.57 1.76 1.64
30–40 let 1.78 1.37 1.76 1.90 1.34 1.92 2.01 1.74 1.89
We ﬁnd similar relations when, instead of the HCF, the variable in the analysis is the
number of children the woman currently has (CNCH in Table 4) or the number of children
the woman would like to have (NOCH in Table 4). For example, in the 30–40 age group, the
average number of children for each individual type is 1.78 x 1.90 x 2.01. The differences between
the averages are statistically insigniﬁcant and the sequential correlation between the
typology and the number of children in this age group is close to zero and is also statistically
insigniﬁcant (gamma = 0,11, p >).
Another indicator signalising that Hakim’s typology is not a good predictor of fertility in
the Czech Republic is the relationship between this typology and the value of children indicator.
Based on Hakim’s theory we would expect women’s perceptions of the value of children
to differ by lifestyle preferences. But this is not the case. Table 5 shows that work-centred
and adaptive women more strongly emphasise the value of children (i.e. they agree with
the statement that a person must have children in order to have fulﬁlment in life) than homecentred
women. This ﬁnding also tells us that even Czech career women desire to have children,
again conﬁrming a conclusion reached by many other analysts, that being able to
achieve a work-life balance is extremely signiﬁcant for increasing fertility in the Czech
Republic7)
. Conversely, it is more often home-centred than work-centred women who agree
with the statement that children are not essential to a person’s self-fulﬁlment, while based on
Hakim’s theory the opposite distribution would be expected.
The ﬁnal piece of evidence that Hakim’s typology is not a good indicator of (expected) fertility
in the Czech Republic is the data on the average number of children that women in our
sample over the age of 36 have. We know from age-speciﬁc fertility that fertility among
Czech women after the age of 36 is very low, so with some licence we can assume that the
number they have at age 36 is their completed fertility. Table 6 shows that there is no difference
between work-centred and home-centred women with regard to the average number of
children they have, and moreover, the highest intensity of completed fertility is observed
among adaptive women.
6)
With some statistical licence, this typology can be regarded as an ordinal type of variable.
7)
For example, Rychtaříková (2003) claims that the conﬂict between a woman’s work commitments and her traditional
role in the family has led to the sharp decline in fertility. Based on empirical data Kocourková (2001) found
that women would consider having another child if they had the option of working part time or if they had the option
of ﬂexible working hours.
Czech Demography, 2008, Vol. 2
52
Hakim’s typology and family policy
It follows from Hakim’s theory that women’s perceptions of family policy measures designed
to facilitate childcare and parenthood and make it easier to combine work and family
responsibilities should differ by lifestyle preference. In our research we formulated sixteen
such measures and asked respondents to rank them by subjective importance8)
. Table 7 shows
the total support respondents gave to the four measures they identiﬁed as the most impor-
tant.
The preferences show that Hakim’s typology does work in this case and women differ by
lifestyle preference in their attitudes towards family policy measures. Home-centred women
more often favoured extending paid maternity leave at 90% of the previous wage (compared
to work-centred women the ratio is 57:42), signiﬁcantly increasing the child allowance
(50:42), and increasing the amount of the birth beneﬁt (24:12). Conversely, work-centred
women more often than home-centred women selected measures connected with work: support
for ﬂexible working hours or part-time work (38:20), increasing the number of nurseries
and kindergartens (19:10), ensuring adequate availability of childcare facilities for schoolage
children (14:5). The differences were not that signiﬁcant in the case of other measures.
Differences in preferences were similarly found with regard to which family policy measures
work-centred women and home-centred women selected as the least important for making
parenthood easier (Tab. 8).
Work-centred women more than home-centred women viewed increasing the birth beneﬁt
(17:6) and the existence of newlywed loans (12:4) as of absolutely no importance. Logically,
home-centred women considered the least important measure that of allowing the father to be
on maternity/parental leave instead of the mother (25:16) – these women naturally see childcare
as their domain. They also ascribed little importance to measures aimed at increasing the
number of nursery schools and kindergartens (13:4) – they have no need for them as they are
at home with their children.
Table 5 Perception of the value of children by Hakim’s typology in the Czech Republic, share of responses agreeing with
the statement (N = 1232), in %
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Table 6The average number of children of women aged 36+ by Hakim’s typology
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Note: The symbols optically underscore the cells where the frequency is signiﬁcantly different from the expected frequency on
the assumption of the independence of the observed indicators. The symbol “+” indicates a higher measured frequency compared
to expectations; the symbol “- ” indicates the opposite. In each cell there can be one to three plus or minus symbols based
on the statistical signiﬁcance of deviation (95%, 99%, 99.9%).
Statement Work-centred women Adaptive Home-centred women
To have fulfilment in life, a person must have children 91 93 + + + 79 – – –
Today’s world offers many opportunities for achieving fulfilment
in life that a child is no longer actually necessary
9 7 – – – 21 + + +
Age group Work-centred women Adaptive Home-centred women N
36+ 1.54 1.82 1.59 1.73 (N = 289)
8)
The wording of the question was: In state family policy there are measures that are designed to make parenthood
and childcare easier and to make it possible to better combine working in the labour market and family responsibilities.
Select four from the following selection that you see as the most important in this regard. Arrange them in order
of importance.
53
Ladislav Rabušic – Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea: Hakim’s Preference Theory in the Czech Context
Table 7 Hakim’s typology and the family policy measures that female respondents in the Czech Republic consider the
most important for helping them combine work and family responsibilities (in%; the measures are listed according to
the preferences of work-oriented women)
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Table 8 Hakim’s typology and the family policy measures that female respondents in the Czech Republic consider the
least important for helping them combine work and family responsibilities (in%; the measures are listed according to
the preferences of work-oriented women)
Source: Data ﬁle MPR 2005.
Measures Work-centred women Adaptive
Home-centred
women
Extending paid maternity leave at 90% of the previous wage 42 48 57
Significantly increasing the child allowance 42 41 50
Support for flexible working hours or part-time work 38 32 20
Reducing the taxes of people with minor children 28 28 28
Reducing the costs of child education 23 20 20
More affordable housing for families with children 23 22 28
Increasing the number of nurseries and kindergartens 19 15 10
Stronger measures against unemployment 16 22 20
Ensuring adequate availability of childcare facilities for school-age
children
14 8 5
Increasing the birth benefit 12 18 24
Better job protection legislation for parents 11 10 5
The existence of newlywed loans 10 11 13
Requiring employers to allow mothers/fathers with children
under the age of 10 to have 1–2 days off every month
9 7 8
Reducing the length of parental leave, increasing the parental allowance 6 10 9
Making kindergartens and nurseries more affordable 4 5 3
Allowing the father to be on parental leave instead of the mother 3 3 1
Measures
Work-centred
women
Adaptive
Home-centred
women
Total
Increasing the birth benefit 17 9 6 10
Allowing the father to be on parental leave instead of the mother 16 17 25 18
Requiring employers to allow mothers/fathers with children under the
age of 10 to have 1-2 days off every month
14 11 6 11
The existence of newlywed loans 12 9 4 9
Making kindergartens and nurseries more affordable 8 13 9 12
Better job protection legislation for parents 6 4 5 4
Reducing the length of parental leave, increasing the parental
allowance
5 4 7 5
Increasing the number of nurseries and kindergartens 4 10 13 10
Reducing the costs of child education 4 4 5 4
Ensuring adequate availability of childcare facilities for school-age
children
4 6 7 6
Extending paid maternity leave at 90% of the previous wage 3 2 0 1
Reducing the taxes of people with minor children 2 2 3 2
Support for flexible working hours or part-time work 2 2 3 2
Stronger measures against unemployment 2 3 2 3
More affordable housing for families with children 2 3 2 3
Significantly increasing the child allowance 1 1 1 1
Czech Demography, 2008, Vol. 2
54
Conclusion
In this article we tested whether Catherine Hakim’s much-discussed theory of a typology
of women (home-centred women, work-centred women, and adaptive women) based on lifestyle
preferences relating to labour-market participation and the perception of the roles of
men and women in the family also applies in the Czech Republic. According to Hakim, the
typology should be a good predictor of women’s fertility behaviour and family policy prefer-
ences.
Based on a representative survey of Czech women aged 20–40 we found that Hakim’s typology
does not work well in the Czech Republic. The distribution of the three types corresponds
to Hakim’s ﬁndings in other European countries, but, contrary to Hakim’s assumptions,
it is not a good predictor of expected or completed fertility. It does, however, apply as
expected in the case of women’s family policy preferences. Work-centred women favour
measures that help them combine work and family, while home-centred women favour measures
that make it easier for them to remain at home and care for their children themselves.
Hakim vehemently promotes her typology and claims that it is a simple tool with which to
predict women’s fertility behaviour. Following our analyses, we are not altogether convinced
this is true. The ﬁndings relating to its ability to predict fertility were particularly disappointing.
Hakim’s writings and conference papers had inspired the hope that by determining preferences
and formulating lifestyle types we would be able to predict completed fertility. If her
typology did work and we were able with some probability to expect that differences between
women’s lifestyle preferences would be reﬂected in differences between their completed fertility,
we would then be able to design the appropriate family policy based on this information.
However, in the Czech context these hopes fell through.
One likely reason why women do not always follow the preference patterns expected under
Hakim’s typology is that the preferences the indicators are intended to capture do not relate
to the perceived value of children, which is a very important factor in explaining differences
in fertility intensity, and, as ﬁrst demonstrated by Hoffman and Hoffman (1973) and then by
Nauck (2006), has played a signiﬁcant role in international comparisons. Another likely reason
is that the responses to the set of questions the typology is based on are contextually dependent.
Consequently, they are not deeply embedded and unchanging aspects of a woman’s
personality that determine all the decisions women make between the ages of 20 and 40 about
the number of children to have.
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Hoffman, Lois W. – Hoffman, Martin L. 1973. The Value of Children to Parents. In James T. Fawcett (ed.). Psychological
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1, p. 19–48.
Manea, B.-E. – Mrázová, M. – Rabušic, L. 2006. Teorie založená na lidských preferencích jako možný příspěvek
k vysvětlení současného reprodukčního chování. In T. Sirovátka (ed.). Rodina, zaměstnání, a sociální politika.
Boskovice: František Šalé-ALBERT, p. 55–76.
Nauck, B. 2006. The Value of Children and the Framing of Fertility. Resuls from a Cross-Cultural Comparative Survey
in Ten Societies. (Manuscript for the European Sociological Review)
Rychtaříková, J. 2003. Diferenční plodnost v České republiky podle rodinného stav a vzdělání v kohortní perspektivě.
In D. Hamplová – J. Rychtaříková – S. Pikalková. 2003. České ženy: vzdělání, partnerství, reprodukce a rodina.
Praha: Sociologický ústav AV ČR, p. 41–83.
LADISLAV RABUŠIC is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Studies,
Masaryk University, in Brno, and he is currently also the Dean of the faculty. His main research inter-
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Ladislav Rabušic – Beatrice-Elena Chromková Manea: Hakim’s Preference Theory in the Czech Context
ests are population studies and value changes. He is the author of dozens of papers and book chapters
published in the Czech Republic and abroad or presented at sociological and demographic conferences
inside the Czech Republic or abroad. In the Czech Republic he frequently publishes work in Sociologický
časopis / Czech Sociological Review and in Demography. He is the author of a monograph on the
causes and effects of demographic ageing (Czech Society Is Ageing), is the editor of the book Czech
Society and Seniors, and he also published a monograph titled Where Have All the Children Gone?
on the causes of the low fertility rate in the Czech Republic. Low fertility and population policy are the
thesmes that is has recently been focusing on most.
BEATRICE-ELENA CHROMKOVÁ MANEA has worked at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Brno
and its Institute for Research on the Reproduction and Integration of Society since 2005. Her research
interests are population studies and especially low fertility, wherein her main focus is the single child
phenomenon. She is also interested in the issue of work-life balance. Last year she co-wrote a chapter
on the preference theory, which was published in T. Sirovátka (ed.) The Family, Work, and Social
Policy, and on which this article was based.
Appendix
H1. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements using a ﬁve-point scale
where 1 means agree strongly, 2 agree somewhat, 3 have no strong feelings either way, 4 disagree
somewhat and 5 disagree strongly:
a. Even when women work, the man should still be the main breadwinner in the family;
b. In times of high unemployment married women should stay at home.
H2. Who should have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring an adequate income for a family? The
male partner? The female partner? Or both equally?
H3. Who should have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the housework is done properly in
a household? The male partner? The female partner? Or both equally?
H4. If without having to work you had what you would regard as a reasonable living income, would
you still prefer to have a paid job? Yes, No, I do not know.
H5. People talk about the changing roles of husband and wife in the family. Here are three kinds of
family models. Which of them corresponds best with your ideas about the ideal family?
1. A family where the two partners each have an equally demanding job and where housework and
the care of the children are shared equally between them.
2. A family where the wife has a less demanding job than her husband and where she does the larger
share of housework and caring for the children.
3. A family where only the husband has a job and the wife runs the home.
4. None of these three cases.
H6. Who is the main income-earner in your household: respondent, partner, both of you jointly or
someone else?