Sofiana Sinani

Evidence from Europe suggests that paternity leaves have norm-setting power in the household. While most mothers take maternity leave, we are unaware if its duration affects household norms. I use a one-year extension of maternal care in the Czech Republic to study the formation of children’s occupation preferences over family and career. The reform pushed more mothers into unemployment to provide full-time care to their child, reinforcing their homemaker role in the household. I proxy children’s occupation preferences through their university applications and estimate a regression discontinuity design. I find no effect on girls; however, the affected boys were 20% less likely to apply to stereotypically feminine fields. I investigate potential channels that could be driving my results. I find no strong evidence that the reform changed the children’s academic ability (captured by their high school track) nor their preferences for research- and mathematics-oriented tracks. Thus, my results seem consistent with the hypothesis that boys hold less stereotypically feminine occupation traits (nurture, care, and well-being) because they grew up in more conservative households. To the best of my knowledge, my paper offers the first evidence that longer maternal care does have the power to influence children’s gendered-specific occupation preferences.

The child penalty explains the majority of gender employment and wage gaps; however, less is known about the factors driving the child penalty itself. In this paper, we study the gender gap in childcare preferences as a potential factor that contributes to the child penalty. We surveyed Czech parents and elicited the minimal compensation they would require to stay home to care for a child. Mothers require less compensation for childcare than fathers. The estimated gender gap in childcare preferences is CZK 2,500 monthly, 7.6% of the median female wage, and cannot be explained by differences in labor market opportunities or prosocial motives to care for a family member. We further document widespread misperception of fathers’ preferences, as respondents incorrectly expect fathers to require less to care for a child than to care for an elderly parent.