It’s a Family (Policy) Affair: Family Policies and Heterogeneity in Gender Attitudes

Abstract

Abstract Why do younger cohorts in advanced democracies hold more conservative gender attitudes? Rather than understanding these attitudes as a “backlash,” I argue that these represent mixes of traditional and egalitarian attitudes that ultimately reflect the gendered character of family policies. Using an original dataset of family policies, I show that policies which alleviate care burdens and encourage workforce participation of mothers are related to support for working mothers. Conversely, policies which reinforce traditional divisions of labor are linked to greaterprevalence of essentialist beliefs. Different combinations of family policies cross-pressure gender attitudes, resulting in complex groupings, or “varieties of egalitarianism.”