Do Men Care about Childcare? Rethinking the Politics of Work-Family Reconciliation

Margarita Estévez-Abe and Tae Hyun Lim. 2024. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, jxae002, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxae002

Existing literature on the politics of work–family reconciliation policies focuses primarily on women and their policy preferences as the main driver of recent policy expansions. But what do we know about male preferences? This article explores this question in an innovative way by integrating insights from economic and sociological studies of division of labor and bargaining within the household. It investigates the link between women’s relative resources within the household and their male partners’ preferences for different types of reconciliation policies. Drawing on regression analysis of nineteen OECD countries using the International Social Survey Program data (Family and Changing Gender Roles IV), we find that: (1) men in dual-earner households, men in college-educated educational homogamy, and men in educational hypogamy (the woman is better educated) are more likely to support reconciliation policies; and (2) women’s earnings and education have different effects on men’s preferences.