Explaining differences in gender role attitudes among migrant and native adolescents in Germany: intergenerational transmission, religiosity, and integration

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examines gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents in Germany and attempts to explain why adolescents of Turkish, former Yugoslavian, and Eastern European origin tend to have more traditional attitudes than their native peers. In order to do so, it combines a migrant–native comparative approach that highlights the impact of religiosity and host society integration with an intergenerational transmission perspective that emphasises the continuity of gender role attitudes across generations. The empirical analysis relies on dyadic parent–adolescent data (N = 2744) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. It demonstrates the importance of incorporating intergenerational transmission processes to fully understand attitude differences between natives and migrants: a substantial part of native–migrant gaps in gender role attitudes can be attributed to migrant parents’ more traditional attitudes and a strong transmission of attitudes across generations. Once intergenerational transmission and the influence of religiosity and integration have been accounted for, the remaining differences between gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents are small.