Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving

Collins, Caitlyn

doi:10.1093/sf/soz105

Cited by 84 publications

(173 citation statements)

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“…The culture and structure of American workplaces-based on the ideal worker, breadwinner archetype-is constructed around male workers and the inference that men are available to devote themselves completely to their jobs and careers since their primary family obligation is financial providership (Becker 1981;Blair-Loy 2003;Collins 2019;Parsons 1954).…”

Section: Work-family Supports and Gender Egalitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cultural norms of masculinity and fatherhood mutually reinforce the idea that men should be earners, placing pressure on workers to adhere to the image of the ideal worker for fear of employer retribution or stigma (Collins 2019;Hodges and Budig 2010;Rudman and Mescher 2013). This work devotion schema is highly pronounced in the US.…”

Section: Work-family Supports and Gender Egalitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flexplace Work and Partnered Fathers’ Time in Housework and Childcare

Carlson¹,

Petts²,

Pepin³

2020

Preprint

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Access to and use of work-family policies, especially by men, has direct implications for advancing gender equality. Using the 2017-18 American Time Use Survey Leave Module, the authors investigated the association between time spent working from home – a workplace benefit known as “flexplace” – among fathers in different-sex partnerships (n = 1,956) and their time spent in housework and childcare. The authors also considered whether these associations vary by their partners’ employment status. Findings show fathers’ use of flexplace was associated with increases in fathers’ time spent in routine housework, conditional that their partners worked full-time. Concomitantly, fathers’ use of flexplace was also associated with increases in their time spent providing childcare, particularly routine care, regardless of their partners’ labor force participation. This study updates our understanding of the links between fathers’ use of work-family benefits and their contributions to domestic labor at home, and expands our understanding of the viability of flexplace policies for achieving more equitable divisions of labor in families.

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Section: Work-family Supports and Gender Egalitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Work-family Supports and Gender Egalitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexplace Work and Partnered Fathers’ Time in Housework and Childcare

Carlson¹,

Petts²,

Pepin³

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Paid leave in Germany is relatively short by European standards (maximum of 14 months, yet with the possibility of taking additional unpaid leave), is well-paid (65% of previous income), and contains a "use-or-lose" component of two months that incentivizes fathers to also take leave (BMFSFJ 2018a). Together with the expansion of publicly funded childcare, the introduction of the new leave system has contributed to Germany's shift from a conservative, "familialist", to a "sustainable" welfare state model (Esping-Andersen 1998Lewis 2010;Ostner 2010;Ray et al 2010;Saraceno and Keck 2011;Collins 2019). Yet, even though the division of parental leave has been more gender-equal after the reform than before, pronounced gender differences have persisted: Among parents of children born in 2015, only 36% of fathers took parental leave, and out of these, more than 80% only took the two months that otherwise would have been forfeited.…”

Section: Germany As a Research Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Helps and What Hinders? Exploring the Role of Workplace Characteristics for Parental Leave Use and Its Career Consequences

et al. 2019

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The division of parental leave among couples today is still unequal—even in countries with progressive leave schemes. Given the gendered nature of the workplace, we examine how organizational characteristics relate to fathers’ uptake and length of parental leave as well as to the perceived career consequences of leave uptake among those fathers who took leave. In our mixed methods study, we draw on unique quantitative and qualitative data on different-sex couples with young children in Germany (2015). We find that the fear of professional repercussions and the lack of a replacement at work inhibit fathers both from taking leave in general and, for those who take leave, from taking it for more than two months. Interestingly, however, the majority of fathers who took leave did not think that their leave negatively affected their professional advancement. This positive evaluation was independent of the length of leave. We compared fathers’ perceived leave consequences to those of mothers, who tended to have a more negative view of the impact of taking leave on their careers. Both fathers and mothers were more likely to report negative career consequences if they worked in organizations that promoted a strong ideal worker norm, that is, where employees thought that they were expected to prioritize paid work over their private life.

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“…Fathers, by contrast, should not be less likely to be invited to a job interview because fatherhood is not culturally incompatible with paid employment. If anything, employers may feel normatively obliged to ensure that men with children are able to fulfill their breadwinner roles and may therefore give preference to fathers over childless men (Benard and Correll 2010;Blair-Loy 2009;Collins 2019).…”

Section: Empirical Predictions On Hiring Discrimination In Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Germany is an ideal context for such an experiment. First, it is a prototypical conservative welfare state that relies mainly on the family as a provider of care work (Blome 2016;Leitner 2017;Collins 2019) and has comparatively high motherhood wage penalties (Gangl and Ziefle 2009;Gash 2009;Kühhirt and Ludwig 2012). By examining whether motherhood penalties in hiring also occur outside the liberal welfare state context of the US, with its comparatively small motherhood wage penalty (e.g., Gangl and Ziefle 2009), my findings can provide some indication of how widespread discrimination against mothers in hiring actually is.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Hiring Practices Penalize Women and Benefit Men for Having Children? Experimental Evidence from Germany

Hipp

2019

European Sociological Review

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Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women’s wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the United States, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labour market discrimination.

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Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving

Cited by 84 publications

References 0 publications

Flexplace Work and Partnered Fathers’ Time in Housework and Childcare

Flexplace Work and Partnered Fathers’ Time in Housework and Childcare

What Helps and What Hinders? Exploring the Role of Workplace Characteristics for Parental Leave Use and Its Career Consequences

Do Hiring Practices Penalize Women and Benefit Men for Having Children? Experimental Evidence from Germany

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