ABSTRACT
In the postwar period the housewife model was still the dominant cultural model of the family in the Netherlands. Women increasingly oriented at the new model of a working mother and from the early 1970 on they entered the labour market in growing numbers. The strong growth in gainful employment and the high importance of part-time employment for this increase on the part of mothers were due to the cultural change towards a modernized male breadwinner/female part-time carer model of the family. The family in the form of the nuclear family based on a married couple formed the cultural core of society. Gendered division of labour within the family was already based on the cultural ideal of the housewife model. The majority of the women surveyed gave high priority to 'individualistic' – and egalitarian – goals such as individual self-fulfilment and equal shares of mothers and fathers in childcare.
