Why fathers don’t take more parental leave in Germany: comparing mechanisms in different work organizations

Reimer, Thordis

doi:10.1080/13668803.2019.1608157

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Particularly mothers' employment participation and fathers' workplaces (e.g. Fagan & Norman, 2016;Haas & Hwang, 2008;Hallberg & Klevmarken, 2003;Kitterød & Pettersen, 2006;Reimer, 2015Reimer, , 2019Smith Koslowski, 2008) are of particular relevance in explaining fathers' engagement in childcare outside of leave. Thus, besides "father-sensitive" parental leave policies (O'Brien, 2009), the mother's equal employment participation, greater equality in pay for women and father-sensitive workplace cultures may be important facilitators for a move towards gender equality in care.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

Problemy Polityki Społecznej: Studia I Dyskusje

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This paper examines the relationship between different aspects of the parental leave use by German fathers and their subsequent engagement in childcare. The relationship between the use of parental leave by fathers and their time spent on childcare on weekdays in subsequent years is broken down by three different details to parental leave use (duration, timing and partner's employment status during parental leave). It also examines whether fathers who take parental leave provide more childcare even before they take the parental leave compared to fathers who do not use parental leave. The study is based on German panel data and applies group comparisons with t-test and

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

Problemy Polityki Społecznej: Studia I Dyskusje

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“…One reason for the diverging results could be differences in parental leave schemes in the countries where the assessments took place. In Germany, where the pairfam data were collected, a new parental leave legislation was implemented in 2007, which aimed to nudge fathers’ participation in childcare (Reimer, 2019) and provided financial coverage when mothers or fathers care for their children in the first year after birth. However, Bleidorn et al (2016) used data from Dutch individuals: The Dutch parental leave scheme was unpaid at the time of data collection and did not foresee a job guarantee upon return (Begall & Grunow, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship Satisfaction Can Help to Maintain the Positive Effect of Childbirth on Parental Self-Esteem

Wenzel

Staab

Rowland

et al. 2020

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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The transition to parenthood is accompanied by declined self-esteem levels, which may be explained by parents’ relationship satisfaction. However, prior research examined self-esteem only shortly before and after childbirth and had no or only unmatched childless respondents as a control group, limiting the possibility to examine long-term adaptive processes and the causal interpretation of the associations. Thus, we used panel data (10 years, 4,075 individuals, and 16,122 observations) to compare self-esteem and relationship satisfaction trajectories of parents with matched childless respondents using propensity score matching. We found a quadratic trajectory for parents’ self-esteem, which declined and increased before birth and declined and returned to baseline levels after birth. In contrast, matched childless respondents’ self-esteem decreased linearly before childbirth and then recovered. The quadratic postpartum process in parents was significantly associated with reduced relationship satisfaction. Thus, a fulfilling relationship may help to maintain the positive effects of childbirth on self-esteem in parents.

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“…In bargaining and workplaces, efforts should be focused less on secondary carer leaves and more on increasing the duration and flexibility of paid primary carer leaves, and on creating incentives for primary carer leaves to be taken by fathers and partners, so that 'primary carer' is not automatically associated with the mother. Policies encouraging use by fathers must also be accompanied by changes to the normative climate in workplaces and communities that promote and enable the use of paid primary carer leave by men (Haas and Rostgaard, 2011;Reimer, 2020).…”

Section: Where To Next?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender equality and paid parental leave in Australia: A decade of giant leaps or baby steps?

Baird

Hamilton

Constantin

2021

Journal of Industrial Relations

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The year 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of the Australian Paid Parental Leave Act 2010. Using Baird’s orientations typology and Brighouse and Wright’s equality framework, with evidence from the Workplace Agreements Database and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, this article assesses changes in policy, bargaining and company provisions over the decade. We find that policy changes may enable more fathers and partners to take leave, although the period is short and barriers to uptake exist. In bargaining and company policy, we find modest growth in the proportion of agreements with paid primary and paid secondary carer leave provisions, but no movement in the duration of the leaves, with secondary carer leave much shorter. We conclude that although these changes suggest growing attention to improving women’s working conditions and fathers’ access to parental leave, short secondary carer leaves set normative standards of fathers as ‘supporters’ rather than recognising substantive involvement in care. Consequently, the changes do not promote gender-egalitarian sharing of parental leave. While the introduction of the government scheme was a ‘giant leap’, the 10 years since have seen modest ‘baby steps’ towards greater gender equality in the availability and potential use of paid parental leave.

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Why fathers don’t take more parental leave in Germany: comparing mechanisms in different work organizations

Cited by 25 publications

References 31 publications

Untitled

Untitled

Relationship Satisfaction Can Help to Maintain the Positive Effect of Childbirth on Parental Self-Esteem

Gender equality and paid parental leave in Australia: A decade of giant leaps or baby steps?

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