Family policy information, gender ideologies and normative judgements of work-care arrangements
Final Report Abstract
This project explored the effect of (hypothetical) family policies and take-up related information on social norms around work-care arrangements of families with young children in Germany. Since the mid-2000s, the German government has introduced several parental leave and childcare reforms which have resulted in a steady, yet only slow, growth of maternal labour market involvement, take-up of leave by fathers and usage of formal childcare. However, these trends also went hand in hand with increasing social stratification of workcare arrangements. The project extends recent studies, which found that family policies may impact individual actions and beliefs not only by altering economic incentives but also by shaping work-care ideals and norms also in the short-term and for social groups not directly affected by the policies. This project explores possible channels of normative change around ideals of work and care through i) new information provided by media reports or public policy campaigns and ii) providing (hypothetical) family policy scenarios. By combining social norm theory and sociological conceptualisations of work-care ideals with policy feedback theories and social-psychological models on human cognition, the project has developed an interdisciplinary framework for understanding how family policies relate to normative beliefs towards work and care. The combination of information experiments with vignette studies in the German GESIS Panel and with a factorial survey in the German Family Panel pairfam in 2019/2020 allowed us to explore the change and conditions of social norms around workcare arrangements in more detail and to examine variations across different socio-economic groups. The first part of this project showed that short evidence-based information about consequences of family policy take-up can alter normative judgements about the gender division of parental leave and parental working hours as well as daycare take-up with partly stronger effects among childless respondents and among women. Overall, the information experiments therefore provide evidence that repeated exposure to brief media report-like information has the potential to speed up change in work-care norms. The second part of the project provided evidence that hypothetical improvements in daycare quality and employer support for part-time work may also promote normative acceptance of more gender-equal divisions of working hours in couples with young children and, for daycare quality improvements, also of extended public daycare use. Some of these effects were stronger among respondents with more egalitarian gender beliefs, higher education, and among those without a migration background. Overall, the findings underline the relevance of current political initiatives to promote family-friendly employer-provided policies and to improve daycare quality for young children - in Germany and on a European level. However, the partly stronger effects among more privileged groups suggest that such reforms may reinforce rather than attenuate social inequalities in work and care arrangements.
Publications
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How parenting leaves impact parental employment, family work, and gender norms: a literature review. Research Handbook on Leave Policy, 141-154. Edward Elgar Publishing.
S., Schober Pia & Büchau, Silke
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The Factorial Survey Experiment on "Normative Judgements of Work-Care Arrangements" in the German Family Panel. pairfam Technical Paper No. 19
Schober, P. S., Büchau, S., Philipp, M.-F., Spiess, C. K., Bozoyan, C. & Schmiedeberg, C.
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Changing minds: Can information about parental leave contribute to changes in beliefs about the division of parental leave? Gender & Society Blog
Philipp, M.-F., Büchau, S., Schober, P. S. & Spiess, C. K.
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Day care availability and awareness of gendered economic risks: How they shape work and care norms. Journal of European Social Policy, 34(1), 53-68.
Büchau, Silke; Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Schober, Pia S. & Spiess, C. Katharina
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Parental Leave Policies, Usage Consequences, and Changing Normative Beliefs: Evidence From a Survey Experiment. Gender & Society, 37(4), 493-523.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Büchau, Silke; Schober, Pia S. & Spiess, C. Katharina
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Who Should Scale Back? Experimental Evidence on Employer Support for Part-Time Employment and Working Hours Norms for Couples with Young Children. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 31(3), 531-557.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Büchau, Silke & Schober, Pia S.
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How daycare quality shapes norms around daycare use and parental employment: Experimental Evidence from Germany. BiB Working Paper 1/2024. Wiesbaden: Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung
Philipp, M.-F., Büchau, S., Schober, P. S., Werner, V. & Spiess, C. K.
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How Daycare Quality Shapes Norms Around Daycare Use and Parental Employment: Experimental Evidence from Germany. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Büchau, Silke; Schober, Pia; Werner, Viktoria & Spiess, C. Katharina
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Multiple Dimensions of Gender Ideologies: How They Relate to Normative Judgments of the Gender Division of Parental Leave. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 31(2), 404-428.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur
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Who should scale back? Experimental evidence on employer support for part-time employment and working hours norms for couples with young children. Elsevier BV.
Philipp, Marie-Fleur; Büchau, Silke & Schober, Pia
