UGOD Seminar | Growing up with involved fathers: Adolescent paternal involvement, parental employment configurations, and adult gender beliefs in Japan

Recent research on paternal involvement in housework (role modeling effect) and childcare (father-child interaction effect) has focused mainly on early and middle childhood, assessing only short-term impacts on children’s and adolescents’ gender attitudes. Less is known about whether and how fathers’ domestic participation during adolescence—a formative period for identity and worldviews—shapes adults gender ideology. Adolescents’ exposure to fathers’ domestic roles occurs within varied family contexts shaped by parental employment configurations, which structure household labor and decision-making and likely moderate the effects of paternal involvement. Utilizing longitudinal data from the Japanese Life Course Panel Study (JLPS), this study examines how paternal domestic involvement at age 15 influences adult gender ideology across male-breadwinner and dual-earner households. Analyses show that paternal involvement in housework at age 15 is consistently linked to more egalitarian gender attitudes in adulthood; Paternal childrearing in egalitarian dual-earner families fosters progressive gender ideology, whereas in male-breadwinner families it tends to reinforce traditional beliefs. These associations are stronger among father-son dyads than father-daughter dyads. These findings advance our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of gender ideology in a gender-inegalitarian society and highlights the lasting significance of fathers’ domestic roles during adolescence—a pivotal stage of development.