Organizational policies, workplace culture, and perceived job commitment of mothers and fathers who take parental leave

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Abstract

Americans do not always fully utilize available parental leave policies due (in part) to fear of a commitment penalty – where taking leave (or taking longer periods of leave) lowers perceptions of job commitment. Using a survey experiment (N = 1713) to identify whether organizational leave policies affect perceived job commitment, we find that leave-taking (and taking longer periods of leave) is negatively associated with perceived commitment. However, perceived commitment is higher when workers take leave under more favorable policies, and the effect of favorable policies on perceived commitment is greater for fathers than mothers. Overall, these results can help organizations design parental leave policies that increase the likelihood that workers can take needed leave without damaging their careers.

Section snippets

Background

The United States is a world outlier when it comes to paid parental leave policies. Most countries throughout the world – and all high-income countries other than the U.S. – provide paid leave to new mothers. Additionally, most high-income countries have statutory policies that allow fathers to take paid leave after the birth of a child (Koslowski et al., 2019; World Bank Group, 2018).1

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework for this study is informed by ideal worker norms that are embedded within workplaces and the broader culture, the structure of gender and how it shapes workplace experiences, as well as research on policy design and workplace dynamics. The ideal worker norm became widespread due in large part to growth in white-collar, middle-class jobs in the mid-20th century, and has since expanded to dominate American workplaces as well as the broader culture (Blair-Loy 2003; Davies

Data and methods

Our sample is drawn from Prolific (www.prolific.co),3

Results

We first assess the effects of each of the experimental manipulations on perceptions of worker commitment. Unstandardized coefficients are presented in Table 2, and results provide evidence in support of our first and second hypotheses. As expected, perceived commitment is lower for workers who take longer parental leaves (b = −0.097). Across the range of leave taken (0–12 weeks), perceptions of commitment decrease by 1.16 points (about one SD). Specifically, for each standard deviation (SD) of

Discussion

Parental leave policies have increasingly become a popular topic among academics, policymakers, and the general public. Most Americans want better parental leave policies, and wide-ranging evidence shows numerous benefits of parental leave for families, parents, children, companies, and the broader society (Kaufman 2020; Milkman and Appelbaum, 2013; Moss et al., 2019; Petts et al., 2020a, Petts et al., 2020b; Petts and Knoester, 2020; Pew Research Center, 2017). Although states are increasingly

Conclusion

Overall, our study identifies organizational policies and workplace cultures that can improve perceptions of worker commitment among those who take parental leave. This is vitally important for policymakers to be mindful of when designing and implementing parental leave policies. Largely unfavorable policies, and policies that are implemented within unfavorable work environments, will likely be underutilized (Kossek et al., 2011). By designing policies that encourage and enable more workers to

Declaration of competing interest

The authors do not have any conflict of interests to declare.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Amy L. Petts and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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