Currently, parental leave policy is one of the key instruments of social policy in the family sphere in many European countries. Despite the common territorial context, parental leave design may vary greatly in different European countries. In this respect, the influence of differentiative parameters of the parental leave system on the social policy results in European countries is still overlooked. Our study aims to compare parental leave policies in European countries using cluster analysis and reveal the differentiation of the results of policies related to parental leave policy in the clusters of countries. We put forward the following research questions: (1) Are groups of European countries shaped according to the characteristics of parental leave policy similar to European geographical regions? Which cluster has the largest proportion of CEE countries? (2) How different are the results of policies associated with parental leave policy in these groups of countries? As an information source, we used the International Review of Leave Policies and Research 2020, which presents data on parental leave policy in 32 European countries. As indicators for cluster analysis, we used the number of maternity, paternity, and parental leave flexibility elements. The research identified three groups of European countries varying in the number of flexibility elements in the structure of each type of leave. We concluded that leave policies in these countries are not conditioned by their geographical location but may result from their social policies. We also observed that a parental leave policy may contribute to reducing gender inequality in the country. The scientific significance of the research lies in revealing similarities and differences between parental leave policies in the context of a wide circle of European countries and in expanding existing knowledge of the public values theory in public administration.

The article considers the problem of combining two types of labor activity — professional and parental labor. The aim of the research is to identify objective and subjective barriers for combination of these two labor spheres. We focus on specific elements of the organization of labor of working mothers (length of the working week and working day, time of the start and the end of work, alternation of work and days off, leave period, form of work organization) and on identifying subjective barriers that prevent the effective combination of professional and parental labor. We conducted an online survey of 265 women aged 18 to 45 working in various organizations in the Sverdlovsk region. We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and group comparison based on nonparametric criteria. The results of the study are as follows: the length of the working day, as well as the time of its beginning and end, act as objective barriers to combining professional and parental work for Ural women. The subjective barriers preventing the effective combination of professional and parental work for Ural women are stereotypes of employers and colleagues who do not have children, based on the perception of the low efficiency of professional activities of workers with children, the negative impact of children on the implementation of professional work and the professional career of parents, misunderstanding of the advantages that children give to workers with children in the process of their professional work. The presence of such subjective barriers often entails refusals in employment of subjects of parental labor, a deterioration in the attitude of the employers towards them, and increases the likelihood of going on unpaid leave.

The COVID-19 pandemic is characterised by active law-making processes aimed at health care and support of different categories of population in many countries in the world. Starting from 2019, due to negative demographic trends, Russia has experienced the active transformation of the state support system for families having children. This trend has strengthened during the pandemic. Our research aims to analyse the internal characteristics of the family policy, namely the state support for families having children, during the year preceding pandemic and within the pandemic period. We consider the dynamics of the family policy architecture by means of Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) analysis and demonstrate the opportunities for using the results of such analyses in the highly dynamic situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed 11 federal legal acts adopted in Russia after January 1, 2020 that addressed parents and offered support for families with children. These acts contain 78 institutional statements that we coded in accordance with the IGT rules, defining the attributes, objects, deontics and conditions in each sentence. Our results are as follows: 1) Russian family policy before and during COVID-19 pandemic can be divided into three stages, including the short-term second stage from the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of the pandemic. The most obvious changes in the three stages are seen in terms of the Objects and Conditions of the institutional statements. At the second and third stages we see a major expansion of support receivers (the Objects) as well as changes in the Conditions for the benefits gain.  Conditions vary greatly and differ in terms of regularity of measure and the type of the payment granted; 2) Legal acts adopted do not always indicate clear Attributes, i.e., the subjects (federal and regional authorities) responsible for the implementation of the particular rule sometimes can hinder the implementation of the regulation; 3) Classification of the parameters of the main support measures in the framework and categories of the IGT analyses lead us to the probable concept of the information policy that would be clear to the beneficiaries of support measures.

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