Family‐friendly practices in parliaments are central to the recruitment and retention of diverse representatives. Yet, instituting such reforms raises questions about public reactions, something little tested in current work. A conjoint experiment in the United Kingdom tests if the public punish MPs for taking time off their elected roles for a baby. And, importantly, asks who pays the price? Against expectations, MPs who take parental leave are not punished by the public. Voters prefer MPs who are parents, even when they take leave. Crucially, this preference is contingent upon MP sex. Women MPs who take parental leave are consistently the preferred choice over their male counterparts. When the ‘costs’ of parenthood are emphasised, women MPs receive a parenthood benefit, while men MPs do not. The findings align with the recent positive bias for women in electoral choice experiments and lend further support to implementing family‐friendly policies in politics.

As the number of working parents rises, employers are increasingly called upon to support employees’ work–family (WF) obligations. Grounded in conservation of resources theory, we examined how providing varying degrees of parental support (paid vs. unpaid leave and family-supportive vs. -unsupportive leadership) is mutually beneficial to employee and organizational well-being – the ultimate criterion for organizational science. Participants (N = 538) were randomly assigned to read vignettes that varied the amount of parental support provided for expectant working parents. We tested whether WF benefits fairness perceptions moderated the indirect effects of parental support on felt obligation through job-related anxiety. Findings supported our proposed moderated-mediation model, with the most positive effects when full parental support was provided to individuals with high fairness perceptions. Our research highlights the value of providing both paid leave and family-supportive leadership, while also considering employees’ fairness perceptions, to reap the most gains of employee and organizational well-being.

This manuscript compares gender equality in childcare leave policies across 21 countries and examines its relationship with gender equality in the labour market. To assess gender equality in childcare leave in each country, the duration gap and the uptake gap between genders in childcare leave are examined, and these two gaps are combined using Z-scores to measure the overall level of gender equality in childcare leave. Subsequently, the relationship between overall gender equality in childcare leave and labour market outcomes, such as gender employment and wage gaps, is explored. The results indicate that gender equality in childcare leave is generally highest in Scandinavian countries, moderate in Continental European countries, and mostly low in Eastern European countries. Furthermore, the degree of gender equality in childcare leave is negatively correlated with the gender employment gap, whereas no clear relationship is found with the gender wage gap.

Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo left office with Japan's “Womenomics” policy having fallen far short of its 2020 targets, and with its greatest achievement, the increase in female non-regular employment, largely reversed by the COVID-19 recession. Although significant initiatives have been undertaken in the provision of childcare, tax reform, and parental leave policy, elite opinions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the government bureaucracy and the corporate sector militate against the mandatory regulations and political and social reforms that are still needed. These reforms are required because of the severity of Japan's demographic and economic challenges, the limited political feasibility of mass immigration, and the deep structural inertia built into Japan's employment system.

Social role theorists argue that the roles that people inhabit and their experiences within can alter their attitudes. We use Swedish panel data to demonstrate how involvement in the parental role changes attitudes toward government policies differently for fathers and mothers. For fathers who take parental leave, the caregiving activities accompanying this leave conflict with stereotypical masculine experiences and such counter-stereotypical engagement should be transformative. We find that fathers who take more parental leave favor care provided by the state. For mothers, we hypothesize and find that the caregiving role during parental leave confirms a female-typical role, resulting in small effects that are not significant. We conclude with a discussion of how state policies can alter the effects of gender by providing specific experiences within a role, such as parental leave, and the significance of finding results in a country with high baseline levels of gender equality.

Many studies have analysed what could motivate centre-right governments to develop progressive family policies, given their historically traditionalist ideology. Updating classic institutionalist accounts, this article expands the focus beyond centre-right parties formally in charge. It argues that in coalition and minority governments, partisan veto players may act as agenda-setters, design policy reforms and successfully exert pressure to approve them through three mechanisms: agreements for government formation, conditions for government survival and bureaucratic continuity. Drawing on novel empirical data from interviews and document analysis, this article applies deductive process tracing to analyse the German parental allowance reform of 2006 and the Spanish 2017 paternity leave extension. The findings complement existing studies that focus on the agency of centre-right parties as ‘protagonists’ of these reforms, arguing that in some cases they have instead ‘consented’ to reforms proposed and supported by other parties.

A major reason for the gendered division of parental leave use is the financial compensation during leave. Swedish national parental leave benefit provides 77.6 percent of earlier earnings up to an income ceiling, but collective agreements cover part of the income loss above the ceiling during leave. We focus on the importance of such collective agreements by examining fathers’ parental leave take-up across the 2000s, as agreements were expanded during this period in time. We combine register data for the period 2001 to 2011 with the Longitudinal Integrated Database for Health Insurance and Labour Market Studies (LISA) being the key data source. The main division of agreements is between the state, the municipality and county, and the private sector. Results indicate that fathers with income above the income ceiling increase their use over the time period. Especially in the private sector a polarisation can be seen, where high income fathers increase their leave use, while fathers with lower income fall behind. As we do not find stronger increase in fathers’ leave use in sectors where agreements expanded across time there is no evident support of a direct effect of the top-ups.

This paper examines family leaves in Ireland, particularly for fathers, in the context of changing parenting roles and the increased involvement of fathers in the care of their child(ren). Drawing upon the results of a survey that captured the views of 637 parents and focus group discussions with parents, it highlights parental experiences of parental, paternity and maternity leave. Policy changes are explored to assess the preferences of fathers and mothers in terms of payment, duration and transferability of leaves between parents. In tandem with women's increased access to employment, the study examines evidence of men's desire for greater equality in family roles. The question posed is whether a policy response is needed in relation to fathers' rights to family leave and, if so, on what terms?

This article compares work-family reconciliation policy since 2008 in two contrasting case-study countries, namely France and the UK, and investigates how post-2008 economic circumstances and austerity measures have interacted with other policy drivers to influence the extent and shape of change in this policy area in these countries. The article demonstrates that work-family reconciliation policy in both countries has been resilient in the face of economic and budgetary problems and progress has been made albeit from different starting points and in path-dependent ways to “degender” parental leave and to improve the affordability of and access to childcare particularly for those on lower incomes. However, it also reveals that in both countries, despite partisan consensus on the need to further develop policy, a combination of economic constraints and the opposition to reform of key social and political actors has put a brake on change.

This article asks whether firms should contribute to the costs of procreation and parenthood. We explore two sets of arguments. First, we ask what the principle of fair play – central in parental justice debates – implies. We argue that if one defends a pro-sharing view, firms are required to shoulder part of the costs of procreation and parenthood. Second, we turn to the principle of fair equality of opportunity. We argue that compensating firms for costs they incur because their employees decide to procreate or parent may undermine some of the incentives leading to (statistical) discrimination in the workplace.