Fathering, parental leave, impacts, and gender equality: what/how are we measuring?

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>This research article explores several questions about assessing the impacts of fathers' parental leave take up and gender equality. We ask: How does the conceptual and contextual specificity of care and equality shape what we focus on, and how, when we study parental leave policies and their impacts? What and how are we measuring?</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>The article is based on a longitudinal qualitative research study on families with fathers who had taken parental leave in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Québec), which included interviews with 26 couples in the first stage (25 mother/father couples and one father/father couple) and with nine couples a decade later. Guided by Margaret Somers' historical sociology of concept formation, we explore the concepts of care and equality (and their histories, networks, and narratives) and how they are taken up in parental leave research. We also draw on insights from three feminist scholars who have made major contributions to theoretical intersections between care, work, equality, social protection policies, and care deficits: Nancy Fraser, Joan Williams, and Martha Fineman.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>The relationship between fathers' leave-taking and gender equality impacts is a complex, non-linear entanglement shaped by the specificities of state and employment policies and by how these structure parental eligibility for leave benefits, financial dimensions of leave-taking (including wage replacement rates for benefits), childcare possibilities/limitations and related financial dimensions for families, masculine work norms in workplaces, and intersections of gender and social class. Overall, we found that maximizing both parental leave time and family income in order to sustain good care for their children (through paid and unpaid leave time, followed by limited and expensive childcare services) was articulated as a more immediate concern to parents than were issues of gender equality. Our research supports the need to draw closer connections between parental leave, childcare, and workplace policies to better understand how these all shape parental leave decisions and practices and possible gender equality outcomes.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title><jats:p>The article is based on a small and fairly homogenous Canadian research sample and thus calls for more research to be done on diverse families, with attention to possible conceptual diversity arising from these sites.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Practical implications</jats:title><jats:p>This research calls for greater attention to: the genealogies of, and relations between, the concepts of care, equality, and subjectivity that guide parental leave research and policy; to the historical specificity of models like the Universal Caregiver model; and to the need for new models and conceptual configurations that can guide research on care, equality, and parental leave policies in current global contexts of neoliberal capitalism.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>We call for a move toward thinking about care, not only as care time, but as responsibilities, which can be partly assessed through the stories people tell about how they negotiate and navigate care, domestic work, and paid work responsibilities in specific contexts and conditions across time. We also advocate for gender equality concepts that attend to how families navigate restrictive parental leave and childcare policies and how broader socio-economic inequalities arise partly from state policies underpinned by a concept of liberal autonomous subjects rather than relational subjects who face moments of vulnerability and inter-dependence across the life course.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Capturing the Gender Gap in the Scope of Parenting Related Leave Policies Across Nations

“…Fathers spending time caring alone for children during this period for a certain duration is associated with their increased participation in childcare throughout childhood. Thus, as infant care is no longer seen as the sole domain of women, gender equality outcomes follow, such as increased female labour market participation, reduced gender pay gap, and increased male household work participation (Andersen, 2018;Doucet & McKay, 2020;O'Brien & Wall, 2017).…”

“…Moderate durations of leave for women have a large positive effect on women's employment outcomes and working hours, whereas very short and very long leaves are associated with reduced female labour market participation (e.g., Dearing, 2016). Extending durations of leave for men changes how they might negotiate and navigate care and domestic work (treated as a category distinct from care and paid work responsibilities; see Doucet & McKay, 2020;O'Brien & Wall, 2017). There is not absolute agreement in the literature about the optimal leave duration (from either parent or child perspective; see Olivetti & Petrongolo, 2017), but for the purposes of this analysis less than four months would generally be considered as short, from five months to 12 months as moderate, 12 months to two years as long, and more than two years as very long.…”

Father futures: how gender equality and parental leave differs between the sexes in Canada

“…Yet this focus does suggest a heterosexual bias, focusing on man/woman families, and fails to consider the case for homosexual families where adoption or surrogate/donor conception is chosen. While Doucet and McKay (2020) are right to look toward gender equality within the family sphere based on caregiver roles, the role of homosexual relationships in the recalibration of masculinity in society is crucial.…”

“…Since then, how paternity leave affects gender equality in the home and the office has become a focus of attention. To this end, Doucet and McKay (2020) have asked the following research questions:how does the conceptual and contextual specificity of care and equality shape what we focus on, and how, when we study parental leave? andwhat and how are we measuring?…”

“…As one of the most front-leaning developed economies in the world, Canada has been enacting legislative and social changes to achieve gender and class equality. Yet what Doucet and McKay (2020) contend is that, following the lead of Nordic parental leave experts, there is no direct causal link between paternal leave and gender equality, and that gender-neutral parental leave is only one small facet of working toward gender equality in society (through changes at home and in the workplace).…”