Which fathers are the most involved in taking care of their toddlers in the UK? An Investigation of the Predictors of Paternal Involvement (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sociology, 2019
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.
Measuring Paternal Involvement in Childcare and Housework
Sociological Research Online, 2015
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.
IIn this study we use time-diary data from Denmark, Spain, and the United Kingdom to analyze how fathers’ child care differs across countries with distinct gender norms, family policies, and maternal employment rates. We pay particular attention to the role of mothers’ paid work time in influencing paternal child care. Results show that Danish fathers display the most involved child care behavior. Spanish fathers spend more time in child care than UK fathers, but Spanish fathers are less egalitarian than UK fathers regarding the relative contribution to the couple’s child care time. Women’s paid work is significantly associated with men’s routine child care, the most time-demanding and female-typed forms of parenting, but not with men’s interactive child care. The study suggests that maternal employment partly drives cross-national differences in fathers’ child care time, implying that women’s employment policies can influence active paternal involvement.
Family Science, 2015
In this study we use time-diary data from Denmark, Spain, and the United Kingdom to analyze how fathers' child care differs across countries with distinct gender norms, family policies, and maternal employment rates. We pay particular attention to the role of mothers' paid work time in influencing paternal child care. Results show that Danish fathers display the most involved child care behavior. Spanish fathers spend more time in child care than UK fathers, but Spanish fathers are less egalitarian than UK fathers regarding the relative contribution to the couple's child care time. Women's paid work is significantly associated with men's routine child care, the most time-demanding and female-typed forms of parenting, but not with men's interactive child care. The study suggests that maternal employment partly drives cross-national differences in fathers' child care time, implying that women's employment policies can influence active paternal involvement.
2017
This report was submitted to the 2017 Women and Equalities Committee 'Fathers and the Workplace Inquiry' and is based on findings from our Economic and Social Research Council funded project, which explores what makes fathers involved in their children's care (see http://projects.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/involved-fathers/). Our analysis shows that there are employment-related barriers to fathers sharing childcare more equally with their partners. We recommend three policy changes that would better support fathers to fulfil their caregiver roles. This briefing paper was published by the WEC on 22 March 2017 here: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/fathers-and-the-workplace-16-17/publications/
Journal of Sociology, 2017
Time pressures around work and care within families have increased over recent decades, exacerbated by an enduring male breadwinner culture in Australia and manifested in increasingly long work hours for fathers. We identified fathers who spent relatively long hours actively caring for children despite long work hours and we compared them with other fathers who did less work, less childcare, or less of both. Using 13 waves of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we explored characteristics associated with the time fathers spent in work and care. The age and ethnicity of fathers differentiated those who spent long hours in both work and childcare from all other groups of fathers, yet other factors were also important for the time fathers spent at work or with children. By examining fathers at the margins of the distributions of work and childcare hours, we add valuable insights into associations between work and care for families.
Paternal involvement in childcare: how can it be classified and what are the key influences
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.
Using time-diary data from the ‘2003 Spanish Time Use Survey’ (N = 2,941), I analysed two critical questions related to child development and gender equity. First, how do fathers of different levels of education adjust their parenting activities to their children’s developmental needs? Second, how does the mother’s employment affect paternal engagement associated with distinct time demands and gendered practices? The main contribution of the study is the empirical focus on three different subsamples of married fathers with children in distinct age categories, a proxy of children’s developmental needs and households’ child care demands. Three were the main empirical results of the study: (1) In couples with children aged 0-5, the father’s education had a significant positive effect on his physical care (i.e. feeding, bathing, and watching over), when these activities are determinant for children’s future well-being; (2) In couples where the youngest child was aged 3-5, a developmental stage in which cognitive development critically depends on parents’ intellectual stimulation, education was significantly correlated with father’s interactive care, especially in teaching activities; (3) Mother’s employment had a strong positive effect on fathers’ physical care in families with children under school age, when these activities are central for gender equality in the home.
Husbands at home: Predictors of paternal participation in childcare and housework
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1993
Predictors of paternal participation in childcare and housework are examined. A longitudinal sample of 66 couples expecting their 1st child completed extensive questionnaires during the wives' last trimester of pregnancy and 3-8 months after birth. Regressions were conducted in which paternal participation in childcare and housework were regressed on variables pertaining to each of 4 models of paternal participation: relative economic resource, structural, family systems, and sex role attitude. Composite models of paternal participation in housework and childcare were then developed. Fathers' involvement in childcare is best explained by mothers' work hours and fathers' feminism. Fathers' contribution to housework seems best explained by discrepancies in income between spouses, wives' occupational prestige, and dynamics in the marriage. Differences in the determinants of fathers' contributions to childcare and housework are discussed. The benefits of increased paternal involvement in childcare for fathers, children, and mothers have been identified in previous studies. Fathers who are highly involved in childcare report increased closeness with their children (Hood & Golden, 1979; Russell, 1982), greater feelings of competence as fathers (Baruch & Barnett, 1986), more positive attitudes toward child rearing, and greater satisfaction with parenting (Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984). Moreover, children with highly involved fathers adopt fewer sex role stereotypes (Carlson, 1984), demonstrate more productive problem-solving behavior (Easterbrooks