This study examines how men and women in heterosexual partnerships influence each other’s parental leave decisions through their gender role attitudes. We differentiate between attitudes toward women’s parental role, women’s worker role, men’s parental role, and men’s worker role, and consider the role of traditional gender ideology denoting an attitude of negatively evaluating mothers’ employment when children are young. We investigated communal traits as a potential moderator to better understand partner effects, i.e., one partner’s role attitudes affecting the other partner’s leave decision. We analyzed longitudinal data from N = 365 heterosexual, mainly German dual-earner couples, collected between pregnancy and about 18 months after the birth of their first child, using the actor-partner interdependence model. We examined mothers’ and fathers’ attitudes toward all five types of gender roles and found that both mothers and fathers were influenced in their leave decisions by their partners’ attitudes toward early maternal employment. Mothers whose partners were more traditional in this regard took longer leaves; fathers whose partners were more traditional took shorter leaves. Fathers’ leave length was also influenced by their partners’ attitudes toward men’s worker role, with more traditional attitudes resulting in shorter leaves. The latter relationship was moderated by fathers’ communal traits, such that more communal fathers were more strongly influenced by their female partners’ attitudes. Overall, this research extends the understanding of mutual influences and decision-making dynamics in dual-earner couples in the early family phase.

本研究探讨了异性伴侣关系中的男性和女性如何通过性别角色态度影响彼此的育儿假决定。我们区分了对女性父母角色、女性工人角色、男性父母角色和男性工人角色的态度，并考虑传统性别意识形态的作用，即对孩子年幼时母亲的就业持负面评价的态度。我们研究了作为潜在调节因素的公共特征，以更好地理解伙伴效应，即一个伙伴的角色态度影响另一个伙伴的休假决定。我们使用行动者-伴侣相互依赖模型分析了 N = 365 名异性恋者（主要是德国双职工夫妇）的纵向数据，这些数据是在怀孕期间和第一个孩子出生后约 18 个月内收集的。我们研究了母亲和父亲对所有五种性别角色的态度，发现母亲和父亲的休假决定都受到伴侣对母亲早期就业的态度的影响。伴侣在这方面比较传统的母亲会休更长的假期；伴侣较为传统的父亲休假时间较短。父亲的休假时间也受到伴侣对男性工人角色的态度的影响，更传统的态度导致休假时间更短。后一种关系受到父亲的共同特征的调节，因此更多的共同父亲更容易受到女性伴侣态度的影响。总体而言，这项研究扩展了对早期家庭阶段双职工夫妇的相互影响和决策动态的理解。