Parental Leave Policies in Europe and Men's Attitudes toward Work-Family Feminism: Accelerating the Rise in Support.

This paper asks if the family and parental leave policies in a particular set of European countries have acted to accelerate the long-term slow-moving trend among men in these countries toward support for feminism regarding the work-family nexus. I develop and test the theory that those policies aimed at increasing men's "non-traditional" experiences with child care and house-keeping have steered more men toward support for feminism than would be the case absent these policies. In this case, men's support for feminism largely depends on education, ideology, occupational status and other variables comprising the more stable, slower-moving "ideological" or philosophical basis of men's support for feminism. A conditional model centered on interaction effects has yielded modest empirical support for an acceleration effect of parental leave policies. Ideology, occupational status and age appear to explain less of men's attitudinal support for feminism in countries with stronger incentives for men's leave-taking. Data was drawn from two sources: Eurobarometer 65.1: The Future of Europe, Consumer Protection in Transborder Purchases, Family Planning, and Opinions and Experiences in Transborder Purchases, February-March 2006 (Papacostas 2007); and the ranking by Gornick and Meyers (2003) of the paid family leave policies of European and other developed countries as of 2000 according to level of gender equality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]