Why do younger cohorts in advanced democracies hold more conservative gender attitudes? Rather than understanding these attitudes as a “backlash,” I argue that these represent mixes of traditional and egalitarian attitudes that ultimately reflect the gendered character of family policies. Using an original dataset of family policies, I show that policies which alleviate care burdens and encourage workforce participation of mothers are related to support for working mothers. Conversely, policies which reinforce traditional divisions of labor are linked to greaterprevalence of essentialist beliefs. Different combinations of family policies cross-pressure gender attitudes, resulting in complex groupings, or “varieties of egalitarianism.”

German family policy was dramatically reformed in the 2000s because of dual reforms to parental leave and childcare provision. While considerable evidence has suggested the reforms affected employment and other outcomes, this article asks what the consequences of these reforms are for the family, specifically for patterns of work‐family arrangements. Moreover, it asks how education matters for work‐family arrangements post‐reform. Using German Socio‐Economic Panel data, I show that college‐educated mothers giving birth to their first child after the reforms earned roughly half of household income if they benefited from expanded local childcare access. By contrast, in areas with lower childcare availability, even among the college‐educated, mothers' earnings resemble pre‐reform patterns, where mothers earn between a quarter to a third of household income. Therefore, the reforms contributed to greater differences in family structures based on the education. One interpretation of these findings is that the status reproducing nature of the Continental welfare states has recalibrated for the modern age, de‐gendered for those with the greatest labour market returns.