How Do Children Self-Locate Themselves in the Social Hierarchy? Educationally Homogamous Parents, Working Mothers, and Children’s Subjective Social Status

Children have been assumed to share their father’s subjective social status (SSS) because fathers tend to occupy the highest socioeconomic status in a family. The progress of women in education and their increased contribution to the family economy cast doubt on this assumption, but limited data availability has hindered research on children’s SSS. Utilizing the 2005–2021 Korea Labor and Income Panel Study, this study examines whether children’s SSS is influenced by family settings that deviate from traditional gender norms. The results show that children tend to share the same SSS with their parents, but their SSS varies depending on the family settings. Children of educationally homogamous parents express higher SSS than children of educationally hypergamous or hypogamous parents net of family socioeconomic backgrounds. Also, children of the sole male breadwinner tend to have higher SSS than children of co-breadwinners. These results imply that on top of gender discrimination in labor markets, women whose social status is higher than that of their partners face an additional challenge in the family: Their children’s SSS is lower than that of the traditional male breadwinner families.