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This article ties together key findings from a 12-year cross-national qualitative collaboration that involved researchers from nine European countries. Our comparative analysis draws on longitudinal heterosexual couple data, in which both partners were interviewed first, during pregnancy, and second, between six months and two-and-a-half years after childbirth. We tackle the relational ties that shape family practices from a lifecourse perspective, emphasising the interdependent construction of motherhood and fatherhood identities, couples’ institutional embeddedness and linked lives. Analysing the data by combining the relationality and lifecourse perspectives brings forth how women and men enact agency in a constrained environment while making consequential decisions about their own, their partners’ and children’s futures. Whereas the gender culture provides parents with arguments and discourses to motivate their work-care plans, the policy context limits how new parents interact as they seek to escape or cope with institutionally prescribed gender divisions of work and care.

This paper examines the factors associated with a gendered division of childcare among parents in Germany. While much is known on the gender division of housework in families and the economic and s...

The authors argue, in line with recent research, that operationalizing gender ideology as a unidimensional construct ranging from traditional to egalitarian is problematic and propose an alternative framework that takes the multidimensionality of gender ideologies into account. Using latent class analysis, they operationalize their gender ideology framework based on data from the 2008 European Values Study, of which eight European countries reflecting the spectrum of current work-family policies were selected. The authors examine the form in which gender ideologies cluster in the various countries. Five ideology profiles were identified: egalitarian, egalitarian essentialism, intensive parenting, moderate traditional, and traditional. The five ideology profiles were found in all countries, but with pronounced variation in size. Ideologies mixing gender essentialist and egalitarian views appear to have replaced traditional ideologies, even in countries offering some institutional support for gendered separate spheres.

Der Beitrag motiviert ein Mixed-Methods-Design fur die soziologische Erforschung geschlechtsspezifischer arbeitsteiliger Prozesse beim Ubergang zur Elternschaft und beschreibt seine Umsetzung. Der Fokus liegt auf der Stichprobenstrategie, welche die Kombination zweier Formen von Langsschnittuntersuchungen ermoglichen soll. Beide Untersuchungen werden international vergleichend durchgefuhrt. Das Stichprobendesign spielt sowohl fur den internationalen Vergleich als auch fur die Ergebnisintegration eine zentrale Rolle. Ziel des komplementaren Forschungsdesigns ist die systematische Verknupfung einer Analyse sozialer Strukturen der (Re‑)Produktion geschlechtsspezifischer arbeitsteiliger Muster mit den subjektiven Handlungsmotivationen, Deutungen und Zielen, die diesen Mustern zugrunde liegen. Die kontextbezogene Analyse von qualitativen Interviews und strukturellen Handlungsmustern zeigt, dass die Agency werdender Eltern mit zunehmender Kongruenz von dominanten Geschlechterideologien und familienpolitischen Rahmenbedingungen gestarkt wird.

This article assesses the impact of discontinuous work histories on young women’s occupational mobility in Germany, Sweden and the US. Women with continuous work histories are compared with those with gaps due to family leave, unemployment, or other reasons. The German Life History Study, the Swedish Level of Living Survey and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to estimate Cox regression models of the transition rate to downward or upward occupational mobility. The results indicate that US women face increased downward mobility with increasing duration of both family leave and unemployment. German women with unemployment experience are also more likely to encounter downward mobility, but no such relationship is found for family leave. In Sweden, family leave experience reduces the chances of upward mobility. Results question the human capital approach, according to which skills should deteriorate at the same rate independent of the reason for the leave.

Contains fulltext : 174122.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents' perceived work-family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for child care and leave from paid work, are capable of reducing work-family conflict as well as the gender and educational gaps in work-family conflict. We use data from the European Social Survey 2010 for 20 countries and 5296 respondents (parents), extended with information on national policies for maternity and parental leave and child care support from the OECD Family Database. Employing multilevel analysis, we find that mothers and the higher educated report most work-family conflict. Policies supporting child care reduce the level of experienced work-family conflict; family leave policy appears to have no alleviating impact on working parents' work-family conflict. Our findings indicate that family policies appear to be unable to reduce the gender gap in conflict perception and even widen the educational gap in work-family conflict. 25 p.

In the 21st century, the division of housework remains gendered, with women on average still spending more time doing chores than their male partners. While research has studied why this phenomenon is so persistent, few studies have yet been able to assess the effect of gender ideology and socio-economic resources at the same time, usually due to data restrictions. We use data from the pairfam, a new and innovative German panel study, in order to test the effect of absolute and relative resources as well as his and her gender ideology on the division of housework. We employ a life course perspective and analyze trajectories of couples’ housework division over time, using multi-level random effects growth curve models. We find that an egalitarian gender ideology of both him and her significantly predicts more egalitarian division-trajectories, while neither absolute nor relative resources appear to have an effect on the division of housework over time. Furthermore, our results expand the literature by investigating how these processes differ among childless couples and couples who experience the first birth.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag analysiert die Dynamik von Traditionalisierungsprozessen der häuslichen Arbeitsteilung im Eheverlauf westdeutscher Paare. Die Studie weist nach, dass vor allem Traditionalisierungsprozesse die Entwicklungsrichtung der häuslichen Arbeitsteilung dominieren. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, ob und inwieweit normenorientierte soziologische und ressourcenorientierte ökonomische Theorien geeignet sind, zu erklären, weshalb Männer in der Regel ihren relativen Beitrag an den weiblich konnotierten Haushaltstätigkeiten im Zeitverlauf verringern. Auf Basis einer Analyse von Längsschnittdaten des Bamberger Ehepaar-Panels zeigt sich, dass ökonomische Handlungstheorien vor allem wegen ihrer geschlechtssymmetrischen Vorhersagen die Dynamik arbeitsteiliger Traditionalisierungsprozesse nicht erklären können. Mit der These zur Veränderung normativer Bezugsrahmen für geschlechteregalitäre und -divergente Fairnessnormen werden Überlegungen angestellt, wie man die Veränderung der Arbeitsteilung im Haushaltskontext besser verstehen kann.

This study analyses labour market transitions of women in the time around first childbirth. Two employment decisions are considered: exiting the labour force and a reduction in work hours. We assess change in these transitions in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2008. We test whether policy changes, in particular the introduction of unpaid parental leave, have changed the opportunity costs of specific work‐family arrangements for women and their partners. We use detailed life-history couple data and estimate multinomial logit models. Our results show that over time, new mothers became less likely to exit the labour market and more likely to reduce their working hours. Eligibility for parental leave and public sector employment reduced the probability of exiting the labour market, but had no effect on reducing working hours. In the 1990s and for those eligible for parental leave, the likelihood that a working hour reduction was associated with a lower job level or an employer change decreased. New mothers with an occupational status at least as high as that of their male partner were less likely to reduce their labour supply. Policy changes did not alter the importance of partners’ relative occupational resources.

The article compares changes in West German and American women's mid-career job exits and re-entries and introduces an innovative event-history model to compare mobility across three decades using 1940s and 1950s birth cohorts from the German Life History Study and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. Processes by which transitions through parenthood and marriage impact women's labour market participation vary by country and cohort, evidence that changing gender relations, norms and institutions provide unique options and restrictions for women's family and career trajectories. Homemaking is in decline in both countries, but event-history models show that this decline is due to different life course dynamics in each country: women's job attachment has increased throughout the family cycle in the US, while German women still exit the labour market, but at motherhood rather than marriage, and for shorter durations. Employment interruptions have become more penalizing for women in both countries.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on two welfare state regimes with differing degrees of de‐familialisation strategies, Germany and Sweden, to study whether and how women's career interruptions influence their labour market prospects. By comparing women with continuous careers to those with discontinuous careers due to: parental leave or homemaking; unemployment; or other reasons, the authors explore the support for the skill depreciation hypothesis and signalling theory. Depending on the type of welfare state regime, the authors expect women to be subject to varying degrees of career punishment for time spent out of the labour market.Design/methodology/approachCox proportional hazard regression models of the transition rate of an upward or downward occupational move among women in the labour market were estimated.FindingsFocusing on upward career moves, the results show no significant relationship between a career interruption and upward occupational moves in Germany. In Sweden, the longer the accumulated duration of family leave, the lower the transition rate to an upward move. Overall occupational mobility is higher in Sweden, and in a policy regime where almost all women work, extended leaves may have a more negative effect on career prospects than in Germany, where many mothers drop out of the labour force altogether. In Germany, on the other hand, the authors find traces of unemployment to be scarring, as the risk of downward moves increases with increased unemployment experience.Originality/valueThe paper explores the impact of policies in shaping women's career trajectories and critically examines the often‐cited skill depreciation hypothesis.