Is Leave for Fathers Pronatalist? A Mixed-Methods Study of the Impact of Fathers’ Uptake of Parental Leave on Couples’ Childbearing Intentions in South Korea

Abstract

While many countries with low birth rates have implemented policies incentivizing fathers to take parental leave with the anticipation that it will contribute to raising birth rates, there is scant research empirically testing whether fathers’ uptake of leave is pronatalist. Existing research is limited to a few European (mostly Nordic) countries, and it is unclear whether there exists a positive causal relationship. Using mixed methods, this paper seeks to explore the processes and mechanisms by which fathers’ uptake of parental leave impacts intentions for additional children in South Korea, a country characterized by lowest-low fertility and low but rapidly expanding uptake of leave by fathers. Results based on multinomial logistic regression models suggest that in comparison to fathers who expect to take their first leave shortly, fathers with leave experience are less likely to report couple-level intentions for another child, significantly so at parity two. Interviews of fathers with parental leave experience confirm that fathers attenuate their fertility intentions downwards in light of the difficulties of childcare during their leave. While these intentions may change further down the line and/or couples may decide to continue an unplanned pregnancy, results suggest that fathers’ parental leave has an anti- rather than pronatalist effect in South Korea. This study demonstrates that in countries with poor support for the reconciliation of employment and childcare, equalizing the gendered division of parental leave may not be sufficient to see a reversal in its fertility trends.

Causal Analysis of Policy Effects on Fertility

“…In communities with nurseries, they observe an insignificant long-term increase in the number of children. Conversely, reducing the leave period from 24 to 18 months six years later did not affect births within three years (the longest observed timeframe), although births were rescheduled to earlier points within this window (Lalive & Zweimuller 2009).…”

“…First, a small extension of the mandatory prenatal leave from 6 to 8 weeks in 1974 had no effect on subsequent fertility behavior among women in Austria (Ahammer et al 2020). Yet, in 1990 an Austrian reform, which extended the parental leave period from 12 to 24 months, yielded a 5.7 (14) percent increase in the probability of another birth within 10 (3) years among mothers eligible for extended leave (Lalive & Zweimuller 2009). Supporting evidence of positive short-term effects on the probability of another birth was found by Danzer et al (2022), who analyzed the same reform, separating communities with and without nurseries.…”

On average across the OECD, the number of nurses is about 2.5 times that of doctors

“…The normative demands on what it means to be a "good" parent have grown, or at least grown in importance. The act of balancing the costs and benefits of having children -both financial and non-financial -has been widely studied to better understand the reasoning behind the choice to have fewer, if any, children today than in the past (Mynarska and Rytel, 2022 [145]; Cools and Strøm, 2020 [146]; Lebano and Jamieson, 2020 [147]). Parents tend to put in increasing amounts of time into raising children, rather than letting children grow up without much intervention, and this holds true especially for parents with higher levels of education (Ellingsaeter, Kitterød and Hansen, 2022 [148]), as postulated by (Becker, 1960[3]).…”

Society at a Glance 2024

“…The normative demands on what it means to be a "good" parent have grown, or at least grown in importance. The act of balancing the costs and benefits of having children -both financial and non-financial -has been widely studied to better understand the reasoning behind the choice to have fewer, if any, children today than in the past (Mynarska and Rytel, 2022 [145]; Cools and Strøm, 2020 [146]; Lebano and Jamieson, 2020 [147]). Parents tend to put in increasing amounts of time into raising children, rather than letting children grow up without much intervention, and this holds true especially for parents with higher levels of education (Ellingsaeter, Kitterød and Hansen, 2022 [148]), as postulated by (Becker, 1960[3]).…”

“…A fear of not being able to live up to the ideal of intensive parenting is an important reason for postponing or avoiding family formation. Qualitative evidence from Europe finds that one important reason why some women in their early thirties choose to postpone having children is that they do not believe that they can live up to the ideal of motherhood (Lebano and Jamieson, 2020 [147]; Rotkirch, 2020 [141]). Similar effects are also seen in the United States where the economic investment required can be larger than in many European countries due to extensive public supports available in welfare countries (Guzzo, 2022[142]).…”