Are parents better leaders? The effects of parenthood and gender on followers’ ratings of LMX quality

Abstract

Women are still underrepresented in most managerial positions and this percentage drops even more once women become mothers. One explanation for these findings are negative stereotypes towards women, in general, and towards mothers, in particular. In the present research, we combine social role theory and spillover theory to argue that supervisors should benefit from their parental role by receiving higher ratings of leader-member exchange (LMX) quality. We further hypothesize that mainly fathers should benefit from this effect. We test these assumptions in an online experiment (N = 207) and in a field study (N = 443). We find only mixed support for our assumptions. Most of all, women were not devalued because of their parental role. As we also found only partial support for the spillover assumption, we tested a potential indirect effect of supervisors' parental status on follower-rated LMX via supervisors' work-family supportive behavior in a third study (N = 88), which was supported. We discuss the relevance of these results for both research and practice.