Social and family policies are especially focused on establishing measures, that enable successful reconcilliation of work commitments and family life, which is crucial because nowadays both parents contribute to the financial well-being of their families, not only fathers as they used to. Family policies for parental leave, which is generally understood to be a care measure, intended to give both parents an equal opportunity to spend time caring for their young child. Legal provisions that arrange parental leave vary greatly across the countries. Parental leave is mostly used by mothers, that is why many countries implement measures that encourage fathers to use parental leave. Equal use of parental leave by mothers and fathers would also mean greater gender equality in several areas. In the master's thesis we postulate that interviewed mothers in Slovenia prefer individual use of parental leave by themselves rather than division of parental leave between both parents. Within the master's thesis we conduct a survey in Slovenia, in which we interview employed mothers, uneployed mothers and mothers who are students. We want to find out what positions they hold about the individual use of parental leave by themselves and about the division of it between both parents, possible reasons for small use of parental leave by fathers, possibilities of introducing father's quotas, regulation of parental leave and possible changes of existing regulation. Based on the survey, it was found that interviewed mothers in Slovenia favor individual use of parental leave by themselves rather than equal exploitation of it by both parents although they often self define themselves as being ready to share parental leave with fathers.
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