This study investigates how parental leave policies and uptake may impact heterosexual couples’ relationship satisfaction. It focuses on Germany as an example of a country with a history of familialist policies and long maternal leaves that has recently undergone a significant policy shift. We extend the literature by examining the effects of maternal and paternal leave duration on both partners’ relationship satisfaction while distinguishing between the length of solo, joint and overall leave. The study applies two different methods on data from the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam). First, the study applies fixed-effects regression models ( n = 1046 couples) to investigate the impact of parental leave duration on the change in mothers’ and fathers’ satisfaction over the child’s early years. Second, drawing on exogenous variation as a result of the parental leave reform of 2007, which shortened paid leave for mothers and incentivised fathers’ leave take-up, difference-in-difference analyses ( n = 1403 couples) analyse reform effects on relationship satisfaction of parents with 3-year-old children. The fixed-effects models indicated a consistent negative impact of maternal – especially solo – leave duration on both mothers’ and fathers’ relationship satisfaction. No significant effects of paternal leave length were found. The difference-in-difference approach revealed a positive reform effect on mothers’ relationship satisfaction. In combination, these results suggest that the reduction in maternal leave as part of the reform has had a greater impact on couples’ relationship quality than the relatively short duration of leave taken by most fathers after the introduction of the individual leave entitlement.
The gender typicality of adolescents' occupational aspirations helps sustain occupational segregation, ultimately contributing to maintain gender stratification. According to sociological and psychological perspectives, adolescents develop occupational aspirations by drawing on their gender beliefs and work-related values. Yet few empirical studies have examined the contribution of these value orientations specifically to the gender typicality of occupational aspirations. Moreover, although children from immigrant backgrounds make up an ever-increasing share of school-age students, there is scant evidence on the gender typicality of their occupational aspirations relative to those of their majority peers. This study investigates variations in the gender typicality of occupational aspirations among adolescents from immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds at around age 16. It also explores how the gender typicality of different groups' aspired occupations relates to differences in gender ideologies, in educational aspirations, and in the importance attributed to three work values: the possibility to earn high income, to help others, and to think and solve problems. Drawing on a harmonized survey from England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the analysis uses a sample of 8,574 adolescents, including 1,510 girls and 1,336 boys from immigrant backgrounds. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated the associations with aspired occupations, classified as masculine, integrated, feminine or ultrafeminine based on the proportion of women working in them. Results indicate that boys and girls of immigrant origin aspired to somewhat less gender-typical occupations than their majority peers. Among girls, these differences would be even larger if they were not suppressed by the more traditional gender ideologies held by girls from immigrant backgrounds. In terms of mediating mechanisms, our findings suggest that more ambitious educational aspirations may partly explain these differences. These findings indicate that distinguishing between multiple dimensions of adolescents' work-related values hint at different underlying mechanisms in the formation of adolescents' occupational aspirations.
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