Helen Norman | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

Papers by Helen Norman

Sociology, 2019

Understanding the conditions that facilitate mothers’ employment and fathers’ involvement in chil... more Understanding the conditions that facilitate mothers’ employment and fathers’ involvement in childcare and housework is important for achieving gender equity in paid and unpaid work. Using Sen’s capabilities framework, the article explores the effect of paternal involvement in childcare on mothers’ employment resumption nine months and three years’ post-childbirth. Logistic regression is used on the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study. Results show that the probability of mothers resuming employment increase at both time points if the father is more involved in childcare nine months post-birth – and in some cases, this is more important for her employment resumption than her occupational class and the number of hours the father spends in paid work. However, attitudes have an even stronger effect, and appear to drive behaviour, as the probability of mothers resuming employment increase significantly three years post-birth if either parent endorses more gender egalitarian roles in the first year of parenthood.

Social Science Quarterly, 2018

Objective. Building on previous analysis conducted by Schober (2012), we explore how paternal inv... more Objective. Building on previous analysis conducted by Schober (2012), we explore how paternal involvement in different childcare and housework tasks affects the probability of relationship breakdown between parents. Methods. We use logistic regression on the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study to predict parental relationship breakdown from nine months to seven years post-childbirth. Paternal involvement in four childcare and three housework tasks during the first year of parenthood, are used as explanatory variables. Results. The amount of time the father spends alone, caring for the baby during the first year of parenthood, is associated with the stability of the parental relationship but the effect of involvement in other tasks is moderated by ethnicity and the mother's employment status. Conclusion. These nonlinear relationships suggest further research is needed to explore the different associations between paternal involvement in childcare and housework and relationship breakdown, which are complex and variable according to different characteristics.

As the 2017 International Women’s Day global theme calls on us to ‘be bold for change’, here Dr ... more As the 2017 International Women’s Day global theme calls on us to ‘be
bold for change’, here Dr Nina Teasdale, Professor Colette Fagan and Dr
Helen Norman take stock of the UK’s gender-related policy measures in this blog post for Policy@Manchester

In this blog published by Working Families, Helen Norman and Colette Fagan provide an update on r... more In this blog published by Working Families, Helen Norman and Colette Fagan provide an update on recent childcare initiatives introduced by the Government

Economic provisioning continues to be the essence of ‘good’ fathering and the work schedules asso... more Economic provisioning continues to be the essence of ‘good’ fathering and the work schedules associated with fathers’ employment remain a key factor which shapes their involvement in childcare and domestic work at home. However, the relative impact of fathers’ and mothers’ employment hours on paternal involvement in childcare is unclear, and little is known about the longer term impact, that is, whether a work arrangement organised when the child is under a year old has an impact on paternal involvement when the child is aged three. Here, we focus on employed couples and explore the association that mothers’ and fathers’ employment hours have with paternal involvement when their child is three years old. Multivariate analysis using the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study reveals that it is the mothers’ employment hours when the child is aged three that has the largest association with paternal involvement in childcare at this stage in the child’s life, independent of what hours the father works. Furthermore, both fathers’ and mothers’ employment hours when the child was nine months old have a longitudinal influence on paternal involvement when the child reaches three years old, but it is the hours worked by the mother when the child was aged nine months that has the stronger association with paternal involvement at age three. This suggests that mothers’ work schedules are more important than fathers’ for fostering greater paternal involvement in both the immediate and longer term.

This paper reviews the main debates on how to conceptualise ‘paternal involvement’ in childcare. ... more This paper reviews the main debates on how to conceptualise ‘paternal involvement’ in childcare. The definition offered by Lamb et al (1987) continues to be one of the most used typologies in social and psychological research and, I argue, is still one of the most comprehensive formulations that is neither bound by time nor locality. However, it does have some limitations because classifying fathers’ roles into three dimensions (i.e. accessibility, engagement and responsibility) ignores the multifaceted and subjective nature of fathering practices. In light of this, I consider other typologies of involvement developed by Palkovitz (1997), Dermott (2008) and Pleck (2010) who build on Lamb et al’s three dimensions to provide a more detailed definition of the different components that make up a father’s role. Given the typology deployed must be linked to the overall aim and focus of the particular study, I select Lamb et al.’s three dimensional typology to discuss the key state policy, workplace and individual-level factors that shape paternal involvement on a more general scale. This is important in light of current policy and media debates about how best to support and encourage fathers’ roles at home (e.g. Department for Business, Innovation & Skills 2014; European Union 2013). Using Sen’s (1992) capabilities framework, I discuss how structural factors are important in shaping fathers’ capabilities to be involved but I also reflect on how practices of agency interact to shape involvement in different and complex ways.

Sociological Research Online, 2015

There is currently no quantitative tool for measuring paternal involvement in childcare and house... more There is currently no quantitative tool for measuring paternal involvement in childcare and housework. To address this, we run Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on a sample of households from the 2001-02 sweep of the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study. Two quantitative measures of paternal involvement in childcare and housework are derived for when the child is aged nine months old, which appear to be isomorphic with two dimensions of Michael Lamb’s paternal involvement: engagement and responsibility. Two, moderately correlated latent variables are produced, which are then used to explore employment and socio-demographic characteristics of involved fathers. Our results show that paternal engagement and responsibility are correlated, albeit weakly, with fathers’ employment hours, education and gender role attitudes. The strongest correlation is with mothers’ employment hours, which suggests that mothers’ employment schedules are more important than fathers’ for fostering paternal involvement when the child is aged nine months old. There are also variations in paternal engagement and responsibility according to ethnicity, which suggests cultural differences might interact with the ability of fathers to be involved. This highlights the need for further exploratory analyses on variations of paternal involvement by different ethnic classifications, which has been fairly limited to date.

Purpose: The paper examines whether the social divisions in maternal employment patterns post-chi... more Purpose: The paper examines whether the social divisions in maternal employment patterns post-childbirth, recorded by earlier studies have persisted for a later cohort of mothers that had a pregnancy in the early 2000s in the context of an expansion of childcare and other improvements in reconciliation measures.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Longitudinal data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study is analysed using logistic regression.

Findings: Mothers are more likely to be employed, and employed full-time, when their child is aged three if they were employed during the pregnancy and resumed employment within nine months of the birth. The mothers’ occupational class, ethnicity, household composition and the working hours of a partner also have independent associations with the probability of maternal employment once the child is aged three.

Research limitations/implications: We would expect these results to be modified – but not overturned – in a different national setting, for example where childcare services are more extensive or part-time employment is less common.

Originality/value: These new longitudinal survey results for a recent cohort of mothers in the UK demonstrate that resumption of employment following maternity leave is pivotal for women’s subsequent employment integration. Yet maternal employment trajectories remain shaped by social inequalities. Both results are important for informing debates about reconciliation policy for the pre-school years, including monitoring the impact of the recession on the employment integration of women following childbirth.

This paper provides an analysis of the development of the UK labour market in childcare and elder... more This paper provides an analysis of the development of the UK labour market in childcare and elder care services, referred to collectively as ‘social care’ jobs. The focus is upon developments in the relative role of different providers. The different providers include public sector provision by the state, private sector companies, third sector or ‘social economy’ provision by not-for-profit charitable and community organizations, and informal care provided by family and friendship networks

The European chemical industry will face workforce and skill shortages unless personnel policies ... more The European chemical industry will face workforce and skill shortages unless personnel policies adapt to the realities that the workforce has contracted and the average age has risen (Tivg, Eggert and Korb 2010). The proportion of women who are employed in the chemical industry is low, particularly when compared to the overall female employment rate in each country. Women account for only around a third of employees working in the chemical industry across the EU-28 – far lower than the proportion of women in total employment (45.7 per cent).Hence recruiting and retaining more women in the chemical industry will help offset the projected personnel and skill shortages. Reconciliation measures make an important contribution to the recruitment and retention of women and support employees – men as well as women – who have family care responsibilities to coordinate with their employment. We provide a comparative overview of the national framework of legal regulations and policies to support the reconciliation of employment with the care of children and older family members in nine EU countries: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is intended to help companies, associations and national governments develop appropriate strategies to achieve equal participation of women in the chemical industry, which is also one step towards achieving one of the European 2020 priorities; namely to reach a 75 per cent employment rate for women and men aged 20-64 by 2020.

This report: - Assesses the current employment conditions of part-time workers in comparison with... more This report: - Assesses the current employment conditions of part-time workers in comparison with those of comparable full-time workers across a range of countries. - Investigates the barriers to mutually agreed and freely chosen part-time work that meets the needs of both employers and workers. - Identifies those government policies and enterprise policies and practices regarding working hours and working-time arrangements, which appear to be likely to improve both access to, and the quality of, part-time work arrangements, while also advancing gender equality. - Reviews and analyses those government and enterprise policies, practices and overall conditions that may help workers to successfully transition between full- and part-time work.

Most industrialised countries have witnessed a shift in the ‘male breadwinner’ model of family li... more Most industrialised countries have witnessed a shift in the ‘male breadwinner’ model of family life as new generations of mothers have increasingly combined employment with parenting responsibilities. This has had implications for the role of fathers and their contributions to childcare and domestic work have increased as a result. However the change in fathers’ contributions has not kept pace with the change in women’s economic activity, suggesting there are social, political, economic and cultural barriers in place.

Two sweeps of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) are used to explore some of the conditions under which fathers become more actively involved in childcare and housework when cohort children are aged nine months and three years old. This question is examined cross-sectionally and longitudinally within the context of a two-parent, heterosexual household in Britain. Three data classification techniques are used to derive two latent measures that represent two dimensions of paternal involvement (engagement and responsibility). Multiple regression is used to model involvement at aged nine months; logistic regression is used to model what type of caregiver a father is when the child is aged three.

The main findings are:

- Patterns of maternal and paternal employment have the strongest association with paternal involvement at both time points.

- When children are aged nine months, the hours that a mother works appear to have a stronger association with paternal involvement than fathers’ own work hours (although this is still important).

- The likelihood of a father being involved with his three year old also increases dramatically the longer the hours the mother spends in paid work.

- Fathers’ own work hours have a slightly stronger association with whether they take on a primary caregiving role at age three.

- There are considerable variations in involvement when the child is aged nine months by ethnicity as involvement is lower for fathers with an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi background. Responsibility for housework, however, is slightly higher for black/black British fathers.

- Various demographics also have a small association with involved fathering at age three. For example, fathers are more likely to be involved when their child is a boy, when there are no other children in the household and when they took leave following their child’s birth.

The thesis exposes some of the employment and demographic conditions associated with greater paternal involvement with young children. In doing so it also brings to light some of the barriers to greater gender equity in the division of domestic labour (childcare and housework). The findings emphasise the importance of employment hours with long work hours hindering involvement and mothers’ participation in the labour market encouraging it. The thesis provides a foundation from which to develop further analyses so that a better understanding of the variations in paternal involvement can be achieved.

Sociology, 2019

Social Science Quarterly, 2018

Sociological Research Online, 2015

Design/Methodology/Approach: Longitudinal data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study is analysed using logistic regression.

The main findings are:

- Patterns of maternal and paternal employment have the strongest association with paternal involvement at both time points.

- When children are aged nine months, the hours that a mother works appear to have a stronger association with paternal involvement than fathers’ own work hours (although this is still important).

- The likelihood of a father being involved with his three year old also increases dramatically the longer the hours the mother spends in paid work.

- Fathers’ own work hours have a slightly stronger association with whether they take on a primary caregiving role at age three.

It is essential that men are involved in making the social changes needed to achieve gender equal... more It is essential that men are involved in making the social changes needed to achieve gender equality. An important aspect of this is the development of policy measures to reduce gender inequalities in the domestic division of labour within the home as well as in social care jobs in childcare, eldercare and health. We start by reviewing men’s lower contributions to housework and care work. Such domestic inequality constrains women’s employment opportunities and men’s involvement in parenting and other aspects of family life. We then discuss developments in reconciliation policy that are designed to enable men to play a more egalitarian role at home, including the recent political agreement at the European level to revise the Parental Leave Directive. We then turn to address men’s under-representation in female-dominated social care jobs. Gender-based employment segregation creates several labour market problems in this sector, as in other parts of the economy such as the under-utllisation of women's qualifications and experience and the disproportionate concentration of women's employment in the lower paid parts of the economy, which is a key contributory factor for the gender pay gap

Fathers still put less time than mothers into the domestic tasks involved in looking after their ... more Fathers still put less time than mothers into the domestic tasks involved in looking after their children but across European countries, Australia and North America, they are more involved than was the case for fathers twenty or thirty years ago (Hook 2006). Gender inequalities are less pronounced in some countries, for example Sweden, compared to other Western states (e.g. Craig and Mullen 2011; Sullivan et al. 2009; OECD 2010; Hook 2006) and there is household variation within countries (Raley et al. 2012; Norman et al. 2014).
This chapter examines fathers’ involvement in the domestic tasks of caring for their pre-school children in the UK. The paternal involvement of direct engagement in childcare tasks is distinct from economic provision for the child’s wellbeing via employment (Dermott 2003; also see Norman 2015). We focus on the effect of the fathers’ and mothers’ employment hours on paternal involvement in childcare, and whether the way that parents’ organise their work and childcare arrangements in the first year of the child’s life influences paternal involvement as the child grows up.