Predictors of parental leave support: Bad news for (big) dads and a policy for equality

We are very pleased to share that our new paper on coworker support for parental leave is now published in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. This article is part of a special issue on addressing gender inequality, edited by Prof. Dr. Michelle Ryan and Dr. Thekla Morgenroth.

Although men typically benefit from widely held gender biases in employment (e.g., selection, promotion, and pay), they are often disadvantaged when it comes to work-life. This interferes with fathers' ability to care for their children, but it may also hinder women's career development, thus reinforcing traditional gender roles and sustaining challenges to balance work and family for men and women. Best practices specify that benefits should be equally available to employees, but such policies may only be effective if there is a work culture to support them. As coworkers' responses have not yet been tested, we examine for whom coworkers show the most (and least) support for parental leave (Study 1), we replicate this finding using different methods and show the process whereby employee characteristics influence coworker support for their parental leave (Study 2), and then we test a policy-based intervention to further increase equality in coworker support for parental leave (Study 3).

Gloor, J. L., Li, X., & Puhl, R. M. (2018). Predictors of parental leave support: Bad news for (big) dads and a policy for equality. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 21(5), 810-830. doi: 10.1177/1368430217751630

This paper's findings and implications are relevant to our current ForGenderCare project at Professor Peus' chair at TUM. You can find the full publication here.

The Stigma of Disease and Disability

A chapter featuring Rebecca Puhl (Yale) and my obesity stigma research was just published In Corrigan's edited issue The Stigma of Disease and Disability published by the American Psychological Association. 

Feeling Bullied by Parents About Weight

Rudd Center research published in New York Times Well Blog post by Harriet Brown: Feeling Bullied by Parents About Weight. Read Full Article Here. 

“There still remains the widespread perception that a little stigma can be a good thing, that it might motivate weight loss,” said Dr. Puhl, a clinical psychologist. (Medical doctors, too, fall prey to this misconception.) But research done at the Rudd Center and elsewhere has shown that even well-intentioned commentary from parents and other adults can trigger disordered eating, use of laxatives and other dangerous weight-control practices, and depression.

Campers at Camp Shane in Ferndale, N.Y., one of two camps for overweight children that participated in a study published in Pediatrics.Credit David Ettenberg

Allergies, extra weight tied to bullying

In another study, researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, found that almost two-thirds of 361 teens enrolled in weight-loss camps had been bullied due to their size.

That likelihood increased with weight, so that the heaviest kids had almost a 100 percent chance of being bullied, Rebecca Puhl and her colleagues found. Verbal teasing was the most common form of bullying, but more than half of bullied kids reported getting taunted online or through texts and emails as well.

Read full article here. 

Weight Stereotyping Research published in Glamour Magazine

Glamour commissioned an exclusive poll of more than 1,800 women ages 18 to 40, designed with guidance from Rebecca Puhl, Ph.D., director of research and weight stigma initiatives at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. We asked respondents to imagine a woman whom they had never met and knew nothing about except that she was “overweight” or “thin”; they then had to choose from pairs of words, like ambitious or lazy, to describe her. They could select neither, but fewer than half did—a telling statistic, according to Puhl. “Weight,” she says, “is one of the last acceptable prejudices.”

Read the full article here. 

Don’t Call My Kid Fat! Parents Want Doctors to Talk About ‘Unhealthy Weight’

Rudd Center research published in article on Time Magazine website. 

With 2 million U.S. children classified as extremely obese, it’s impossible to ignore kids’ growing girth. But researchers at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University are suggesting that there are better, more sensitive ways to discuss the issue with parents and children.

“Many people find the term ‘fat’ to be pejorative and judgmental,” says Rebecca Puhl, the study’s lead author and Rudd’s director of research. “A lot of the time, providers have positive intentions, but the language they use can be seen as blaming, accusatory and not helpful.”

Read full article here.