Should Mama or Papa Work? Variations in Attitudes towards Parental Employment by Country of Origin and Child Age
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7728161 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ludovica Gambaro (0000-0003-4045-1562, Federal Institute for Population Research, corresponding author), C Katharina Spie (0000-0001-5618-912X), C Katharina Spiess (0009-0000-5932-7022, Federal Institute for Population Research), Katharina Wrohlich (0000-0002-3648-4022, German Institute for Economic Research), Elena Ziege (0000-0001-6037-7422, Federal Institute for Population Research) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Population Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1869-8980 • E-ISSN: 1869-8999 |
| Publisher | German Federal Institute for Population Research (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.12765/cpos-2023-14 |
| OpenAlex | W4384524465 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 19 |
Employment among mothers has been rising in recent decades, although mothers of young children often work fewer hours than other women do. Parallel to this trend, approval of maternal employment has increased, albeit not evenly across groups. However, differences in attitudes remain unexplored despite their importance for better understanding mothers’ labour market behaviour. Meanwhile, the employment of fathers has remained stable and attitudes towards paternal employment do not differ as much as attitudes towards maternal employment do between socio-economic groups. This paper examines attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. It focuses on Germany, drawing on data from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA). The survey explicitly asks whether mothers and fathers should be in paid work, work part-time or full-time, presenting respondents with fictional family profiles that vary the youngest child’s age. Unlike previous studies, the analysis compares the views of respondents with different origins: West Germany, East Germany, immigrants from different world regions, and second-generation migrants in West Germany. The results highlight remarkable differences between respondents from West and East Germany, with the former group displaying strong approval for part-time employment among mothers and fathers of very young children and the latter group reporting higher approval for full-time employment. Immigrant groups are far from homogenous, holding different attitudes depending on their region of origin. Taken together, the results offer a nuanced picture of attitudes towards maternal and paternal employment. We discuss these findings in relation to labour markets participation in Germany. * This article belongs to a special issue on “Family Research and Demographic Analysis – New Insights from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA
Country of origin · Demographic economics · Economics · Geography · German · Immigration · Parental leave · Political science · Sociology · West germany · Work (physics · Work hours · Demography · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Work-Family Balance Challenges
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| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |