Paid Maternal and Parental Leave Legislation and Primary Prevention

Abstract

For child development, the first three years are crucial to foundations for emotional and mental health, for toilet training and vocabulary development, and for the precipitation of conscience and essential inner controls. For this reason, these are also the primary prevention years during which marital intactness and paid maternal and parental leave benefits are of crucial importance. A comparative social policy review of the status of parental leave legislation in North America and in Europe confirms that the United States is far behind.     

Statutory leave entitlements across developed countries: Why US workers lose out on work–family balance

Using a composite index of legal provisions for annual and family leave in western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea, the authors rank legislative support for this aspect of work–family balance. The United States ranks last: its employers are not required to grant annual leave and employees can take no more than 12 weeks' family leave per year. The United States' comparatively low labour standards, the authors argue, may be due to the dominance of a market‐based conception of employment and the assumption of equal employer–employee bargaining power, neither of which is fully shared by the other industrialized democracies.     

Are the voices of parents heard? A scoping review of satisfaction in parenting programs

Parenting programs are an effective approach to promote positive parenting. In evidence-based practice, client’s values and preferences contribute to promoting quality, and are a crucial component of service evaluation. The current scoping review summarizes quantitative research that examines parental satisfaction with parent training for families with child conduct problems. We aimed to know how much research had been undertaken; what measures have been used; and what were the findings related to parental satisfaction. A scoping review was conducted to retrieve peer-reviewed original articles.Out of 420 papers 5.5 % obtained data on parental satisfaction. Seven different measures were used, mainly Therapy Attitude Inventory and Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Out of 23 papers, ten studies reported Cronbach's alpha coefficients on the assessment that was used to evaluate parental satisfaction. All of the 23 included studies found that parents are very satisfied with the parenting program they have received.The findings indicate that only a few studies included parents’ values and preferences in quantitative evaluation studies on parental programs. In addition, there is a limited arsenal of assessment tools to measure what matters to parents. There is a need to develop measures with high psychometric quality, which will promote more quality in service evaluation.     

Relational ethics as a cultural constraint on fathers' parental leave in a Confucian welfare state,South Korea

Promoting fathers' parental leave has recently become of major policy interest in many welfare states. The Korean Government also introduced paid parental leave for working fathers in 2001 and has increasingly strengthened such incentive schemes. However, despite its rapid advancement, fathers' utilisation of parental leave is increasing slowly and most fathers still opt out of their responsibilities for childcare. As sociocultural norms are a primary cause of this low take-up behaviour pattern, this study focuses on the Confucian relational ethics deeply embedded in Korean society. Through in-depth interviews with 15 Korean working couples, this article demonstrates how Confucian relational ethics constrain fathers from enjoying their individual right to parental leave by designating them as last-resort caregivers within families and as forefront workers in the workplace. This study shows the importance of the sociocultural grounding of a society to ordinary citizens when they utilise a social policy in their daily lives.     

Are they ideological renegades? Fathers' experiences on taking parental leave and gender dynamics in Korea: A qualitative study

Despite their fear of repercussions on career advancement and gender identity, Korean fathers taking parental leave have continually increased. Why do Korean fathers take parental leave in spite of the risk of being stigmatized as less masculine and less ideal workers? Are they willing to be ‘ideological renegades' to be new involved fathers? In‐depth interviews with fathers who took parental leave provide interesting answers. Overall, taking parental leave does not make fathers become ideological renegades since it is mainly utilized in a manner that accommodates the work devotion schema, deviating from the formal policy objectives. This deviant utilization is encouraged and even valued by organizations. This may be part of a psychological contract between organizations and employees, ensuring that employees are dedicated to their career even during parental leave. Furthermore, beyond the legal eligibility of uptake, informal but powerful ‘organizational eligibility' such as high performance or their contribution to the organization, makes not only the likelihood but also the aftermath of taking up different across fathers. As a result, a hierarchy among fathers with class connotations emerges. This hierarchy among fathers, combined with the traditional gender hierarchy, may reinforce the masculine fabric of ideal workers as the norm.     

Social support,parental role competence and satisfaction among Chinese mothers and fathers in the early postpartum period: A cross-sectional study

BackgroundA sense of parental competence and satisfaction during the transition to parenthood can have a tremendous impact on the quality of parenting behaviors, with social support being an important facilitator.AimTo examine parental role competence and satisfaction of Chinese mothers and fathers in the early postpartum period with regard to social support.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in a regional teaching hospital in Guangzhou, China. The study was conducted between June 5 and November 16, 2015. One hundred and eighty parental pairs at 6–8 weeks after birth completed the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale, Perceived Social Support Scale, and socio-demographic questionnaires.ResultsParental role competence and satisfaction of Chinese mothers and fathers were at a moderate level, affected each other and there were no significant differences between the mothers and the fathers. The Competence Scale scores had a significant positive correlation with social support. Multiple regression analysis revealed two variables that predicted maternal Competence Scale scores: maternal social support and the paternal Competence Scale scores. Paternal social support and maternal Competence Scale scores contributed significantly to paternal Competence Scale scores.ConclusionParental role competence and satisfaction of mothers and fathers were at a moderate level and affected by the parenting partner. To improve parental role competence and satisfaction, health care professionals should develop strategies that impact the whole family and not just a single individual. Supportive parenting programs should be implemented for both mothers and fathers.     

The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes,parental education,and educational expansion

Recently, several genome-wide association studies of educational attainment have found education-related genetic variants and enabled the integration of human inheritance into social research. This study incorporates the newest education polygenic score (Lee et al., 2018) into sociological research, and tests three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7599), I report three findings. First, a standard deviation increase in the education polygenic score is associated with a 58% increase in the likelihood of advancing to the next level of education, while a standard deviation increase in parental education results in a 53% increase. Second, supporting the Saunders hypothesis, the genetic effect becomes 11% smaller when parental education is one standard deviation higher, indicating that highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation. Finally, the genetic effect is slightly greater for the younger cohort (1942–59) than the older cohort (1920–41). The findings strengthen the existing literature on the social influences in helping children achieve their innate talents.     

Working Mothers' Choice between Parental Leave and Job Continuity A Paradox in South Korea

This study investigate whether the positive relationship between the use of parental leave and job continuity of mothers exists in Korea. using a secondary dataset composed of 1,000 mothers who have already utilized maternity leave, the article finds that the relationship between the use of parental leave and job continuity of mothers is negative. To enable working mothers to reconcile paid work and family responsibility in Korea, it is therefore necessary to construct a more comprehensive policy package, including expansion of the publicly supported childcare system, the reformation of childcare responsibility between genders, and public payments for childcare provided by families.     

Complicated narratives of ‘Korean-ness’: towards strategic provisionality in parental involvement

The purpose of this paper is to advance the discourse on parental involvement drawing from Butlerian notion of strategic provisionality. In developing a new approach to understanding cultural differences and their relation to Korean parental involvement, the authors analyze qualitative and quantitative data from five New York metropolitan elementary schools. The authors examine the ways in which ‘Korean-ness’ and Korean parental involvement are discursively constructed and embodied in sociopolitical and historical contexts in the United States. We present two themes related to Korean parental involvement: (a) the double-edged component of respect for teachers and (b) biopolitics related to English language and parental involvement. By challenging normalized understanding about Korean-ness, the authors suggest a different approach to ethnoepistemology in order to enrich discourses concerning parental involvement and ethnic/racial studies.