Does the (socio-political) socialization context matter for paternal involvement?

Abstract

Previous literature on paternal involvement emphasizes the influence of fathers’ socialization contexts, considering either welfare policies (Hipp and Leuze, 2015) or experiences with their own fathers (Brown et al., 2018; Parke, 1995). In this study, we combine those two branches of research and examine how fathers’ and their fathers’ (grandfathers’) socialization experiences (parental leave regulations in their early adulthood as an example of (de-)familization policies (Lohmann and Zagel, 2016)) predict paternal involvement today. To measure paternal involvement, we create an indicator for involvement that covers Lamb et al. (1985) three aspects of direct interaction, responsibility, and availability and the fact that a father has taken paternal leave for at least one of his children or not. We use the fact that a substantial proportion of the fathers in the German, national survey AID:A 2019 (Kuger et al., 2020) were socialized in another welfare state regime (6.3% of fathers have a direct and another 13.5% have an indirect migration background (their fathers were born in another country) covering birth cohorts from the 1970s to the 1990s; total N = 1053). We then add context-related information on their (fathers’ and grandfathers’) countries of origin from the OECD family database and estimate an SEM model to test potential direct and indirect effects. We find that more educated fathers who experienced extended parental leave regulations are more involved fathers today. Our results support, thus, that welfare state conditions influence individuals’ behaviour while education is a relevant moderator in this relationship.