Ng relationship (Gerson 2010a). To the extent that they desire children, they tend to decouple marriage from motherhood and to reject the selfless ideology of traditional mothering.1 Gerson (2010a) also finds that men’s and women’s fallback plans may differ somewhat by class background. Despite having less advantageous employment prospects, the women from working class backgrounds in her study were more likely to stress self-reliance and less likely to stress a neotraditional fallback plan than their middle- and upper-middle class counterparts. Moreover, working class men were slightly less likely to fall back on neotraditional arrangements than their more advantaged male counterparts. This contrasts with some prior work suggesting that working class men tend to hold a more gendertraditional ideology (Deutsch 1999; Williams 2010; Wilkie 1993). Taken together, this literature suggests that institutionalized constraints in the workplace, which are generally unsupportive of individuals with family responsibilities, substantially affect men’s and women’s preferences regarding work and family arrangements. Specifically, unsupportive institutions amplify gendered patterns in work-family preferences because they effectively limit a couple’s ability to equally share earning, housework, and caregiving, whereas supportive institutions mitigate such gender differences because they make egalitarian arrangements a more feasible option. Disentangling the extent to which workplace and policy structures affect men’s and women’s stated work-family preferences, independent of otherwise stable, deep-seated C.I. 75535 site beliefs at the individual-level has proven difficult in prior research. Therefore, to advance the literature in this area and gain traction on this complex set of issues, we draw on original experimental data. Before describing our methodological approach in detail, however, we first turn to the literature on work-family policies to provide preliminary reasoning behind our argument that certain kinds of policy arrangements can have the power to “de-gender” individuals’ preferences for balancing formal employment, household work, and caregiving.Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptPolicy Promises and CaveatsIf institutions are arguably to blame for stubbornly gendered work-family patterns, then which kinds of changes in institutions could shift individuals’ preferences and decisionmaking? Many work-family scholars advocate policies that are more supportive of working parents, such as subsidized childcare, paid family leave, flexible scheduling and schedule control (Gornick and Meyers 2003; 2009a; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Kelly, Moen and Tranby 2011). In the United States, access to these kinds of policies is particularly limited.1Prior literature and our empirical predictions leave open questions about how these dynamics vary by sexual orientation. Gerson (2010a) found that ML240 chemical information lesbian and heterosexual women similarly stressed a self-reliant relationship structure as their fallback preference, but none of the gay men she interviewed stressed a neotraditional relationship structure. These patterns are inconclusive, however, because only five percent of her respondents self-identified as lesbian or gay (Gerson 2010a:8). We do not have information on the sexual orientation of our respondents, but we are cognizant of this limitation and hope that future research will examine variation in these processes by sexual orientation. Am.Ng relationship (Gerson 2010a). To the extent that they desire children, they tend to decouple marriage from motherhood and to reject the selfless ideology of traditional mothering.1 Gerson (2010a) also finds that men’s and women’s fallback plans may differ somewhat by class background. Despite having less advantageous employment prospects, the women from working class backgrounds in her study were more likely to stress self-reliance and less likely to stress a neotraditional fallback plan than their middle- and upper-middle class counterparts. Moreover, working class men were slightly less likely to fall back on neotraditional arrangements than their more advantaged male counterparts. This contrasts with some prior work suggesting that working class men tend to hold a more gendertraditional ideology (Deutsch 1999; Williams 2010; Wilkie 1993). Taken together, this literature suggests that institutionalized constraints in the workplace, which are generally unsupportive of individuals with family responsibilities, substantially affect men’s and women’s preferences regarding work and family arrangements. Specifically, unsupportive institutions amplify gendered patterns in work-family preferences because they effectively limit a couple’s ability to equally share earning, housework, and caregiving, whereas supportive institutions mitigate such gender differences because they make egalitarian arrangements a more feasible option. Disentangling the extent to which workplace and policy structures affect men’s and women’s stated work-family preferences, independent of otherwise stable, deep-seated beliefs at the individual-level has proven difficult in prior research. Therefore, to advance the literature in this area and gain traction on this complex set of issues, we draw on original experimental data. Before describing our methodological approach in detail, however, we first turn to the literature on work-family policies to provide preliminary reasoning behind our argument that certain kinds of policy arrangements can have the power to “de-gender” individuals’ preferences for balancing formal employment, household work, and caregiving.Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptPolicy Promises and CaveatsIf institutions are arguably to blame for stubbornly gendered work-family patterns, then which kinds of changes in institutions could shift individuals’ preferences and decisionmaking? Many work-family scholars advocate policies that are more supportive of working parents, such as subsidized childcare, paid family leave, flexible scheduling and schedule control (Gornick and Meyers 2003; 2009a; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Kelly, Moen and Tranby 2011). In the United States, access to these kinds of policies is particularly limited.1Prior literature and our empirical predictions leave open questions about how these dynamics vary by sexual orientation. Gerson (2010a) found that lesbian and heterosexual women similarly stressed a self-reliant relationship structure as their fallback preference, but none of the gay men she interviewed stressed a neotraditional relationship structure. These patterns are inconclusive, however, because only five percent of her respondents self-identified as lesbian or gay (Gerson 2010a:8). We do not have information on the sexual orientation of our respondents, but we are cognizant of this limitation and hope that future research will examine variation in these processes by sexual orientation. Am.