The article is based on comparative analysis of data from the international longitudinal survey ISSP 1994 and 2002 which were focused on gender roles and family. In the analysis European countries were divided on the basis of their inhabitants´ opinions on gender roles in the family and working mothers. Even though employment rate of women in Eastern Europe was higher during the state socialist regime than in Western Europe, countries of the former Eastern European block formed a group with traditional (conservative) attitudes towards gender roles as well as working mothers in 1994 and in 2002. Attitudes to mother's employment turned more gender liberal during the late 1990s. Such conservatism as well as opinion shifts and changes in family behavior in the second half of 1990s are explained by specific socio-political changes and changes on the labor market on the specific case of the Czech Republic.