June, 11 – Regular Seminar

Topic: "Policy, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being in Europe: Testing the Buffering Effects of Father-Allocated Parental Leave"
Speaker: Ekaterina Nastina, CSWR Deputy Director

Centre for Comparative Research on Social Well-Being announces the next regular seminar, which will be held as a zoom session on June, 11at 03:30 p.m. CET (04:30 p.m. Moscow time). Ekaterina Nastina, CSWR Deputy Director, will deliver a report "Policy, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being in Europe: Testing the Buffering Effects of Father-Allocated Parental Leave". 

The seminar will take place online. To participate, please, register via the link.

Abstract

Cross-national comparative research widely documents a seemingly universal "parenthood happiness penalty": parents of young children score lower on most subjective well-being indicators compared to non-parents. This effect was shown to be especially pronounced for mothers due to the disproportionate burden of domestic labor and career disruptions associated with early childcare. In our study, we set the goal to investigate whether egalitarian leave policies that promote involved fatherhood could mitigate this psychological strain and close the gender gap. Using multilevel regression on matched European Social Survey (ESS 11) and OECD data, we focus on parents of toddlers under the age of three - the primary leave beneficiaries. Our preliminary results challenge the "penalty" thesis, with parents reporting higher life satisfaction and happiness and lower depression compared to non-parents. We further explore how these effects differ by gender and whether leave policy affects the relationships. The results are cautiously discussed in light of potential social policy implications while acknowledging design limitations.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.