Beliefs about the Gender Division of Parental Leave and Characteristics Associated with Them

Abstract

The presented research set in a Croatian context explores beliefs about parental/maternity leave and factors explaining these beliefs. The data was gathered on a nationally representative sample of people living in Croatia (N=1000). Participants were asked questions about their beliefs towards parental leave take-up by the mother and the father, their socio-demographic data, attendance of religious services, partners' income disparity and gender- role beliefs. The results show that around 49% of both men and women believe that it is solely the mother's responsibility to use the entire leave, an additional 27% believe that the father should take some part of the leave, and around 24% believe that parents should share the leave equally. Men and women who support more equally shared leave take-up attend religious services less often and hold more egalitarian beliefs about gender division of labour, but do not differ in partners' income disparity. These results imply that gender ideology theory is more applicable in the explanation of beliefs about the gender division of parental leave compared to time-allocation theory. Results of the multinomial logistic regressions show that the strongest predictor of the belief about leave take-up is the gender-role belief. The less the participants believe that the gender division of labour should be traditionally divided, the more likely they are to support equally shared leave between parents. The implication of these findings is that shifts towards supporting gender egalitarian leave take-up will most likely not occur until the attitudes toward gender roles become more egalitarian in general. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]