Family-Friendly Work Practices in Britain: Availability and Perceived Accessibility

Using linked data for British workplaces and employees we find a low base rate of workplacelevel availability for five family-friendly work practices - parental leave, paid leave, job sharing, subsidized child care, and working at home - and a substantially lower rate of individual-level perceived accessibility. Our results demonstrate that statistics on workplace availability drastically overstate the extent to which employees perceive that family-friendly are accessible to them personally. British workplaces appear to be responding slowly and perhaps disingenuously to pressures to enhance family-friendly work practices.