In the present work, we addressed the relationship between parental leave policies and social norms. Using a pre‐registered, cross‐national approach, we examined the relationship between parental leave policies and the perception of social norms for the gender division of childcare. In this study, 19,259 students (11,924 women) from 48 countries indicated the degree to which they believe childcare is (descriptive norm) and should be (prescriptive norm) equally divided among mothers and fathers. Policies were primarily operationalized as the existence of parental leave options in the respective country. The descriptive and prescriptive norms of equal division of childcare were stronger when parental leave was available in a country – also when controlling for potential confounding variables. Moreover, analyses of time since policy change suggested that policy change may initially affect prescriptive norms and then descriptive norms at a later point. However, due to the cross‐sectional nature of the data, drawing causal inferences is difficult.

中文翻译：

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政策作为规范性影响？关于 48 个国家育儿性别划分中育儿假政策与社会规范的关系


在目前的工作中，我们解决了育儿假政策与社会规范之间的关系。使用预先注册的跨国方法，我们研究了育儿假政策与对儿童保育性别划分的社会规范的看法之间的关系。在这项研究中，来自 19,259 个国家/地区的 11,924 名学生（48 名女性）表示，他们认为托儿服务在多大程度上是（描述性规范）和应该（规定性规范）在母亲和父亲之间平均分配。政策主要作为各自国家/地区存在育儿假选项来实施。当一个国家有育儿假时，平等分配育儿的描述性和规定性规范更强——在控制潜在的混杂变量时也是如此。此外，对政策变化以来的时间分析表明，政策变化可能最初影响规定性规范，然后在以后影响描述性规范。然而，由于数据的横截面性质，得出因果推断是困难的。