Becoming a parent has been described as a dominant social norm, especially for women. Though some research has indicated changes toward more flexible gendered parenthood norms, methodological issues may be masking the continued presence of a gender double standard. In line with the condition for activation of double standards, we postulated that endorsement of the parenthood norm would vary depending on the response context. Our aim was to analyze the parenthood norm for women and for men taking into account the response context in a quantitative survey. In a French nationally-representative sample, more than 4,000 female and male adults were asked whether a woman/man can have a fulfilled life without having children in two questions presented in a random order. Based on the literature on question-order effects, the answer to the first question should be influenced by the participant’s personal background (e.g., gender, parental status), i.e., the personal background context, whereas the question asked second should be influenced by the comparison with the first question, i.e. the social relational context. In the personal background context, the own-gender parenthood norm was endorsed more strongly than the other-gender parenthood norm by both female and male participants. In contrast, in the social relational context, the parenthood norm for women was endorsed more strongly than the parenthood norm for men by both female and male participants. Our results showed a strong gender double standard observed only in the comparative context and illustrates the need to use appropriate survey methodology to examine the presence of gendered social norms.

成为父母被描述为一种占主导地位的社会规范，尤其是对女性而言。尽管一些研究表明对更灵活的性别父母身份规范发生了变化，但方法问题可能掩盖了性别双重标准的持续存在。根据激活双重标准的条件，我们假设对父母身份规范的认可会因响应背景而异。我们的目的是分析女性和男性的育儿规范，同时考虑定量调查中的反应背景。在一个具有法国全国代表性的样本中，超过 4,000 名女性和男性成年人被问及一个女性/男性是否可以在没有孩子的情况下过上充实的生活，并以随机顺序提出两个问题。基于关于问题顺序效应的文献，第一个问题的答案应该受到参与者的个人背景（例如，性别、父母身份）的影响，即个人背景背景，而第二个问题的答案应该受到与第一个问题的比较的影响，即社会关系语境。在个人背景背景下，女性和男性参与者都更强烈地认可自己性别的父母身份规范比其他性别的父母身份规范。相比之下，在社会关系背景下，女性和男性参与者对女性的父母身份规范比男性的父母身份规范更强烈地认可。我们的结果表明，仅在比较环境中观察到了强烈的性别双重标准，并说明需要使用适当的调查方法来检查性别社会规范的存在。