Edwin A. Fleishman Award Psychology

Dissertation: Understanding Men's Utilization of Paid Parental Leave: A Competing Identities Perspective

The vast majority of new fathers in the US take less than 2 weeks off when their children are born. While some men take little to no leave because of financial barriers associated with unpaid leave, many others who do have access to paid leave take fewer days than allotted. In this research, I sought to explain why this underutilization may occur, finding that the extent to which men identify as ideal workers was negatively related to leave use intentions, such that a single point increase in ideal worker identification was associated with 5 fewer planned days of leave. However, this negative effect was mitigated when men’s leave use was normative in their organization. Men’s parental identities (as breadwinners / caregivers) were unrelated to their intentions to take leave, regardless of their spouses’/partners’ expectations. Overall, the results highlight the importance of men’s identities as employees and of organizational norms around parental leave policy utilization.

Bio: Lydia Craig Aulisi grew up in Suttons Bay, MI and studied neuroscience and psychology at Macalester College. As a graduate student in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at George Mason University, Lydia studied employee well-being and the work-nonwork interface. She is currently employed by Fidelity Investments as Director of Workplace Consulting Research & Insights, where she develops and executes large-scale strategic research projects to help the organization better understand and address the challenges and priorities facing Fidelity's employer and employee clients.