PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This article studies the relevance of the workplace and family context as well as the experience of conflicts between the work and family domain for fathers’ preference to reduce working hours to care for their children. Previous research was not able to disentangle whether the preference to reduce working hours is related to fathers’ caring involvement or to other reasons. Integrating insights from work-family research and arguments on the relevance of the social context for preference formation we formulate need-based and opportunity-based arguments. Findings on data from the German study "Employment Relationships as Social Exchange" (beata), indicate that the experience of a work-family conflict as well as time-based workplace demands increase the likelihood of fathers’ to hold the preference to reduce working hours, supporting need-based arguments. Our findings further call attention to the importance of the family-friendliness of the organisational culture for fathers’ opportunity to develop the preference to reduce working hours to be more involved in caring tasks.