Employment rates for Norway supplied by Statistics Norway. On average, German mothers would rather their partners worked approximately five hours less per week, w'hile fathers w'ould like to see their partners work three hours fewer per week (Chapter 4 offers a more detailed discussion of German fathers’ relatively long - and German mothers’ relatively short - working hours). These different gender preferences hold true for all countries but are more pronounced in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom than, for instance, in Denmark, France or Sweden, where support systems facilitate fathers and mothers to realise w'orking hours in a less constrained manner. Promoting a better reconciliation of work and family life can deliver a double dividend to the German labour market: it will help the German labour market both in the short term - as more mothers work and/or work longer paid hours - and potentially limit the decline of the overall population, by promoting higher birth rates.