Suchergebnisse

This experimental study investigates how hypothetical employer support for part-time work shapes working hours norms for mothers and fathers with young children in Germany. It extends previous studies by focusing on the couple context, for instance by exploring interdependencies with each partner's earnings potential. The analysis is framed using capability-based explanations combined with a perspective of gender as a social structure. A factorial survey experiment was implemented within the German pairfam panel. OLS and multinomial logistic regressions with cluster-robust standard errors were conducted with 5,565 respondents. Hypothetical employer support similarly increases respondents' recommendations to reduce working hours for mothers and fathers and supports dual part-time arrangements. In couples who face opposing incentives in terms of promotion prospects and employer support for part-time work, prevailing gender norms seem to reinforce the traditionalizing constraints and attenuate the de-traditionalizing influence. Respondents with more egalitarian gender beliefs respond more strongly to paternal employer support.

This study investigates the conceptual argument that constructive and explicit couple communication may reduce gender inequalities in couples' division of family work. We focus on the transition to parenthood which for most couples in Germany results in a shift towards a more traditional division of labour. Using 314 first-time parents from the German Family Panel, we apply growth curve models to assess whether partners' prenatal characteristics explain the division of housework and childcare around the time of childbirth and in the following years. After controlling for gender ideologies and economic resources, male partners' frequency of positive communication is associated with greater father involvement in housework and childcare from the start. However, neither men's nor women's communication behaviours dampen the shift towards a more traditional division of housework and childcare in the first years after childbirth. The frequency of negative communication does not correlate with the division of family work.

Abstract
This experimental study investigates how hypothetical employer support for part-time work shapes working hours norms for mothers and fathers with young children in Germany. It extends previous studies by focusing on the couple context, for instance by exploring interdependencies with each partner's earnings potential. The analysis is framed using capability-based explanations combined with a perspective of gender as a social structure. A factorial survey experiment was implemented within the German pairfam panel. Linear and multinomial logistic multilevel regressions were conducted with 5,856 respondents. Hypothetical employer support similarly increases respondents' recommendations to reduce working hours for mothers and fathers and supports dual part-time arrangements. In couples who face opposing incentives in terms of relative earnings or promotion prospects and employer support for part-time work, prevailing gender norms seem to reinforce the traditionalizing constraints and attenuate the de-traditionalizing influence. Respondents with more egalitarian gender beliefs respond more strongly to paternal employer support.

Family policies not only provide money, time and infrastructure to families, but also convey normative assumptions about what is considered desirable or acceptable in paid work and family care. This study conceptualises and empirically investigates how priming respondents with brief media report-like information on existing day care policy entitlements and economic consequences of maternal employment interruptions may change personal normative judgements about parental work–care arrangements. Furthermore, we analyse whether these effects differ between groups of respondents assumed to vary in their degree of affectedness by the information as well as previous knowledge. The theoretical framework builds on the concept of normative policy feedback effects combined with social norm theory and human cognition theories. The study is based on a fully randomized survey experiment combined with a vignette experiment in Wave 12 of the German Family Panel (pairfam). It applies linear and ordinal logistic regressions with cluster-robust standard errors to a sample of 5,783 respondents. Our results suggest that priming respondents with information on day care policy and long-term economic risks of maternal employment interruptions increases acceptance of intensive day care use across the full sample and especially for mothers with children below school entry age. It further increases support for longer maternal hours spent in paid work among childless women and mothers with school-aged children. Norms regarding paternal working hours are largely unaffected by the information given in this survey experiment.

In this study, we conceptualize and provide novel empirical evidence on norm-setting effects of family policies by investigating how priming with parental leave policy–related information may alter normative beliefs regarding the gender division of parental leave in Germany. We implemented a survey experiment in two waves of the representative German GESIS Panel in 2019 and 2020. Respondents received one of three short evidence-based information primers about (1) long-term income risks of maternal employment interruptions, (2) nonsignificant paternal wage penalties, or (3) increasing rates of paternal leave usage in Germany, or were allocated to the control group that received no further information before rating the division of parental leave in fictitious couples. We apply ordinary least squares regression models with lagged dependent variables to a sample of 5,362 vignette evaluations nested in 1,548 respondents. Remarkably, we find that the effects of all three priming conditions vary significantly depending on whether respondents are asked to judge situations for couples where women earn more or less than their partners. Our findings mostly point to stronger effects of priming with information on income risks compared with paternal leave usage trends and to more pronounced changes in normative beliefs among childless respondents.

Family policies not only provide money, time and infrastructure to families, but also convey normative assumptions about what is considered desirable or acceptable in paid work and family care. This study conceptualises and empirically investigates how priming respondents with brief media report-like information on existing day care policy entitlements and the economic consequences of maternal employment interruptions may change personal normative beliefs about parental work-care arrangements. Furthermore, we analyse whether these effects differ between groups of respondents assumed to vary in their degree of affectedness by the information as well as previous knowledge. The theoretical framework builds on the concept of normative policy feedback effects (Soroka and Wlezien, 2010; Gangl and Ziefle, 2015) combined with social norm theory (Bicchieri, 2017) and human cognition theories (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986; Evans and Stanovich, 2013). The study is based on a fully randomized survey experiment in Wave 12 of the German Family Panel (pairfam) and applies linear and ordinal logistic regressions with cluster-robust standard errors to a sample of 5,783 respondents. Our results suggest that priming respondents with information on day care policy and long-term economic risks of maternal employment interruptions increases acceptance of intensive day care use across the full sample and especially for mothers with children below school entry age. It further increases support for longer hours spent in paid work among childless women and mothers with school-aged children. Norms regarding paternal working hours are largely unaffected by the information given in this survey experiment.

Not only the quantity of formal daycare provision for young children, but also its quality has become an issue of political concern. This experimental study investigates how a hypothetical improvement in the quality of daycare facilities shapes normative judgements regarding daycare use and working hours norms for parents with young children in Germany. The analysis is framed using capability-based explanations combined with theoretical concepts of ideals of care and normative policy feedback theories. We draw on a factorial survey experiment implemented in 2019/2020 in the German Family Panel (pairfam) measuring underlying work-care norms for a couple with a 15-month-old child under different contextual conditions. Ordered logistic and linear multilevel regressions were conducted with 5,324 respondents. On average, high hypothetical daycare quality for young children leads respondents to recommend greater daycare use and longer working hours for mothers and fathers by about 1 hour per week. Respondents who hold more egalitarian gender beliefs, those with tertiary education, native Germans and parents tend to respond more strongly to higher daycare quality by increasing their support for full-daycare use. The results consistently point to the relevance of high quality for increasing the acceptance and subsequently take-up of formal daycare.