Family policy information, gender ideologies and normative judgements of work-care arrangements

该项目调查有关育儿假和儿童保育政策的信息以及有关请假后果的信息如何影响不同社会经济群体对父母就业、请假和正规儿童保育的规范性判断。自2000年代中期以来，德国实行了几项育儿假和儿童保育改革，其目的除其他外包括加快产妇重返劳动力市场，增加父亲参与儿童保育，减少接受正规儿童保育方面的社会不平等。产妇就业率、父亲休假率和正规托儿服务率都有所上升，但仍存在社会分层现象。这可能是由于不同的工作-护理文化在社会上的分层扩散。该项目扩展了最近的研究，这些研究发现，家庭政策可能影响个人的行动和信念，不仅改变经济激励措施，而且还在短期内为未直接受政策影响的社会群体塑造工作-照料的理想和规范。这种规范变化的可能渠道是媒体报道、公共政策运动或社交网络提供的新信息。本项目探讨通过关于现有政策权利和接受政策后果的简短循证信息提高政策能见度是否会改变关于性别分工和儿童保育的规范性判断。我们的理论框架将性别意识和规范性政策反馈效应的概念与社会心理学阐述可能性模型和社会规范理论相结合。为了进行实证检验，我们开发了两个不同的调查实验。这两项计划已被德国两个大型调查小组GESIS小组和德国家庭小组（Pairfam）接受，并将于2019年8月至2020年4月期间实施。该项目的贡献将有三个方面：首先，它将阐明一种可能的机制，即政策如何影响社会规范和信仰。第二，通过考虑政策接近程度不同的社会群体之间的差异效应，可以更好地理解政策相关信息在不同人群中的传播。第三，通过将信息实验与小插曲设计相结合，该项目将确定社会规范可能更加灵活和容易受到新信息影响的夫妇和背景特征，而不是规范性判断相当不灵活的情况。

This project investigates how information about parental leave and childcare policies and about consequences of take-up affect normative judgements about parents’ employment, take-up of leave, and formal childcare among different socio-economic groups. Since the mid-2000s, Germany introduced several parental leave and childcare reforms aimed inter alia at speeding up maternal labour market return, increasing paternal childcare involvement and reducing social inequalities in take-up of formal childcare. Maternal employment and take-up of leave by fathers and of formal childcare have risen; yet, they remain socially stratified. This might be due to socially stratified diffusion of varying work-care cultures. The project extends recent studies, which found that family policies may impact individual actions and beliefs not only by altering economic incentives but also by shaping work-care ideals and norms also in the short-term and for social groups not directly affected by the policies. Possible channels of such normative change is new information provided by media reports, public policy campaigns or social networks. This project explores whether increasing policy visibility through short evidence-based information about existing policy entitlements and consequences of take-up may alter normative judgements about the gender division of labour and childcare. In particular, the project will examine how the effects of information vary across social groups.Our theoretical framework integrates the concepts of gender consciousness and normative policy feedback effects with the social-psychological elaboration likelihood model and social norm theory. For the empirical examination, we have developed two different survey experiments. These have been accepted by two large German Panel Surveys, the GESIS Panel and the German Family Panel (Pairfam), and will be implemented between August 2019 and April 2020. The project’s contribution will be threefold: First, it will shed light on one likely mechanism as to how policies may influence social norms and beliefs. Second, by considering differential effects across social groups that vary in policy proximity, we will be able to gain a better understanding of how policy-related information diffuses across different population groups. Third, by combining information experiments with vignette designs, the project will identify couple and context characteristics for which social norms may be more flexible and susceptible to new information as opposed to situations for which normative judgements are rather inflexible.