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

该项目调查有关育儿假和托儿政策的信息以及关于收养后果的信息如何影响不同社会经济群体对父母就业、请假和正式育儿的规范判断。自2000年代中期以来，德国实行了几项育儿假和育儿改革，除其他外，旨在加快产妇劳动力市场的回归，增加父亲育儿的参与，并减少正式育儿方面的社会不平等。产妇就业率、父亲休假和正式育儿人数有所增加；然而，她们仍然处于社会分层状态。这可能是由于不同工作-护理文化的社会分层传播所致。该项目扩展了最近的研究，这些研究发现，家庭政策可能不仅通过改变经济激励，而且还通过在短期内和对不直接受政策影响的社会群体塑造工作-护理理想和规范来影响个人的行动和信念。这种规范性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。该项目探讨了通过提供关于现有政策应得权利和采纳的后果的基于证据的简短信息来提高政策的能见度，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精化可能性模型和社会规范理论相结合。对于实证检验，我们开发了两个不同的调查实验。这些已被两个大型德国小组调查--Gesis小组和德国家庭小组(Pairfam)--接受，并将在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，即政策可能如何影响社会规范和信仰。其次，通过考虑不同政策接近程度不同的社会群体的不同影响，我们将能够更好地理解与政策相关的信息如何在不同的人口群体中传播。第三，通过将信息实验与小场景设计相结合，该项目将确定社会规范可能更灵活、更容易受到新信息影响的配对和背景特征，而不是规范性判断相当僵化的情况。

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.