Changing Gender Norms – The Impact of Paternity Leave on the Next Generation

Traditional norms about gender roles are one of the remaining barriers to gender equality. We ask to which extent counter-stereotypical behaviors among parents shape gender norms for their children. To that end, we combine the introduction of paternity leave in Spain -which has been shown to foster counter-stereotypical behaviors withing households- with alarge-scale lab-in-the-field experiment conducted with children born around the reform. We show that children whose fathers were eligible for paternity leave exhibit more egalitarian gender role attitudes and perceive less stereotypical social norms towards working mothers and fathers. They also engage more in counter-stereotypical day-to-day behaviors and expect to deviate from the male breadwinner model in the future.