Who aligns their actions with their beliefs? The Correspondence of Gender Ideology and Childcare Attendance in Germany

This study investigates which families are more likely to send their preschool children to early childcare and education (ECEC) institutions. We conceptualize children’s ECEC attendance as a manifestation of parental behavior, which relates to parents’ beliefs about gender and parental roles. We analyze families’ positions in the social structure, i.e., their immigration background and socioeconomic status as moderating factors between their beliefs about gender and parenting, called gender ideologies. Using data from the German PASS Survey, we identify strong associations between gender ideologies of parents and childcare use. Children with parents, who hold egalitarian gender ideologies, are most likely to attend ECEC, whereas those with essentialist parents are least likely to do so. In addition, higher levels of socioeconomic status facilitate alignment between parents’ egalitarian gender ideologies and children’s attendance in ECEC. We find migration related disparities in ECEC use for most immigrant groups under study, but no evidence of an additional migrant penalty for parents with low socioeconomic backgrounds and essentialist gender ideologies. Our analysis systematically underscores the importance of gender ideologies in predicting actual parental behavior.