Value Orientation of Interviewees

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person and the other said she did not reject marriage but did not seek it either. Neither of those two women wanted children. Of the eight married women, six had at least one child and two had none. Women married in their forties had either no children or one, while those in their fifties and sixties had two or three, excluding one woman in her fifties who married late and had none.

Of the seven single women, most lived with parents or parents and siblings, one of whom lived in a three-generation extended family. Two single women were living with roommates rather than parents, one of whom was also cohabitating with her boyfriend. Of the married women, none lived with their parents or in three-generation extended families. All lived with their husbands and five also lived with at least one child.

5.2 Value Orientation of Interviewees

Section B of the interview was intended to evaluate each woman’s values.

Questions 1-2 contrasted materialist values with higher order values and asked interviewees to choose which they thought was more important. Questions 3-6 asked questions that contrasted family values with individualistic values and asked interviewees to choose which was more important. Question 7 asked about household gender roles by asking how a couple should divide housework. Question 8 was open-ended and asked what the purpose of marriage was. Questions 9-11 asked about tolerance of

nontraditional life course choices by asking interviewees’ opinions on a fulfilling life without marriage, a complete marriage without children, and couples who cohabitate.

When it came to materialist values versus higher order needs, the majority of women valued higher order needs more. When choosing whether earning money or self-development was more important in life, all but one person chose self-self-development. The other woman said earning money might be more important if one were married, but self-realization might be more important if one were single. When choosing whether a good salary was more important in a job or if it was more important for a job to be meaningful,

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ten women chose a meaningful job, four chose a good salary, and one said salary if one were married and meaning if one were single.

For family values responses were more mixed. When choosing between the importance of family needs or personal well-being and needs, eight women chose family needs, five women chose personal needs, and two women said it depended on if one were married. For married women, they thought family needs were more important, especially while children were minors. All of the five women who chose personal needs were in their twenties or thirties and unmarried. Both of those who said it depended on marital status were in their sixties.

Despite more women thinking family needs were more important than personal needs, when there was a conflict between parents and children regarding a decision either a parent or a child had to make, twelve of the women said the opinion of whoever needed to make the decision was most important. One said a parent’s opinion was more

important, and two said the child should take advice from parents if it were the child making a decision. For raising a child, more women also thought it was more important to raise children to be independent and think for themselves than to be disciplined and respect elders. Nine women chose independence and five chose discipline. One woman said it depended on the age of the child. If the child were a minor, discipline was more important but if the child were an adult, independence was more important.

The last family value question was about caring for elderly parents. Seven women thought it was acceptable to put parents in a nursing home, five said taking care of parents oneself is preferable. Two said it depends on the state of the parents’ health.

If possible they thought caring for parents oneself is better, but if parents require professional care a nursing home might be better. The last interviewee said there is a generation gap. She cared for her own parents herself but she prefers to be put in a nursing home when she is older.

For gender roles in the home, most women agreed that the division of housework should not be the sole responsibility of women. Only one woman thought the wife should do all housework. Eight women said it was important to discuss who should do each task. Seven women said the division should be based on time and skill, two said it

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should be based on preference, and three said it should be split equally. At least one of the women who mentioned time and skill gave examples of skill that were based on more traditional roles for tasks like home maintenance, but most women thought cooking and cleaning should be shared.

Opinions on the purpose of marriage were also more mixed. Some of the more traditional responses included the purpose being to build a family, to have children, to show commitment, to increase social harmony, and to have a life experience that everyone should have. Two women gave each of those first two responses and one woman gave each subsequent response. For less traditional responses, three women stressed mutual company, love and support, three women said the purpose was to

increase happiness, two women said because of love, two women said to help each other grow as a person. Other answers included learning how to love and accept someone, to take care of someone one loves, and to “explore the fullness of life in an advanced way.”

The most common answers involved happiness or mutual love, support, and growth.

The last few questions of Section B were about tolerance for nontraditional life course choices. The majority of women showed a willingness to accept the choices of others. 13 women said someone can have a fulfilling life without marriage while two said it is possible, but the couple would be missing a major life experience. 11 women said a marriage can be complete without children, two said it is “more complete” with children, and one said the couple will regret it later if they do not have children. The last woman said that in the past a marriage needed children to be complete but today that is not necessarily the case. Eight women said they thought it was okay for a couple to live together without getting married if that was what the couple wanted. One of those women gave enthusiastic support and said it was “awesome.” Three women said it was fine but if the couple had children it was better to get married. Another woman said it was only okay if they intended to get married later. One woman said she respected the couple’s choice but felt cohabitation was too insecure and would advise marriage. Only one woman completely disagreed that couples should cohabitate and the last woman had no opinion.

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Based primarily on their responses to the questions in Section B, women were sorted into value orientation groups, shown in the first column of Table 5.1 in the previous section. There were four groups: conformist, conformist for family values, conflicting values, and nonconformist. Women who were conformist leaned toward the conformist side overall in their responses. Women who were conformist for family values only leaned toward the conformist side regarding family questions but otherwise leaned toward nonconformist values for nonfamily questions. Women in the conflicting values group showed strongly conformist family values and strongly nonconformist other values and their answers reflected tension between the two. Women in the nonconformist group leaned toward the nonconformist side for both family and nonfamily questions.

Overall, there were five women who were conformist, three women who were conformist for family values, two women who showed a conflict between values, and five women who were nonconformist. Looking at the value orientation groups by age, both of the women in their twenties, one woman in her thirties, one woman in her forties, and one woman in her sixties were nonconformist. One woman in her thirties, one woman in her forties, and one woman in her fifties were conformist for family values.

One woman in her thirties and one woman in her forties showed a conflict between values. One woman in her thirties, one woman in her forties, two women in their fifties, and one woman in their fifties were conformist. From this distribution, women who were nonconformist or conformist for family values are spread out across the age groups, but most of the conformist women were in their forties or older and married. The women who showed a conflict in values were both close in age; one woman was 36 and the other was 40 and both were neither married nor in relationships.

Looking at values for different income and educations levels, in this sample of women there is no apparent pattern between values and income or education except possibly for women with conformist values. The two women who had the strongest conformist values overall both had a high school level education and low income.¹³ The

13 One of these women preferred not to report her income, but based on her occupation it was likely fairly low

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other three conformist women had high education levels and two had high incomes, but they were not as conformist as the two with lower education levels and low incomes.

For most women in the sample, there also did not seem to be a pattern between value orientation and household type. The only woman living in an extended family was nonconformist and the only woman cohabitating had conformist family values and only approved of cohabitation if the couple intends to get married. There were both

conformist and nonconformist married women who had children as well as married conformist women who did not. The exception is that there does seem to be a pattern between conformist or conflicting values and marital status. All but one of the

conformist women were married and both women with conflicting values were neither married nor currently in a relationship. The one conformist woman who was unmarried said she hopes to be married in a year or two.

In summary, the majority of women in the sample prioritized higher order needs over materialist needs and were tolerant of other women making nontraditional life course choices. Though more women prioritized family needs over personal, most women still showed respect for an individual’s choices within the family context rather than following the parents’ opinions. The sample was more divided on raising a child to be independent with his or her own thoughts or disciplined with respect for elders, but more women chose independent. When looking at patterns in values, conformist women were mostly in their forties or older and married. Women with conflicting values were all in their mid-thirties or early forties and neither married nor in a relationship. The women with the strongest conformist values all had both lower education and lower income levels. In the following sections, women are compared for common answers within age/marital status groups and value orientation groups. The next section looks at women’s life course choices regarding relationships and work.