Performative Parenting: Social Norms and Fathers' Use of Parental Leave Entitlements
type: CreativeWork
description: Fathers’ use of parental leave is a crucial policy issue in relation to gender equality and at the root of gendered caring norms and unequal divisions of labour throughout the life course. Using comparative mixed methods and a framework that conceptualises parenting as gendered and performative (Butler, 1999), this research contributes knowledge of the influence on fathers’ parental leave decisions of three dimensions of norms: policy, discourse and cultural norms; workplace cultures; and peer and family group norms. I compare the effect of social norms on the decisions made by fathers working for the same multinational firm in three countries: the UK, Sweden and Portugal. I argue that a Butlerian understanding can help answer the question frequently posed in the literature: why, when we know couples have egalitarian intentions prior to the birth of a first child, do couples slip back into conservative gender roles once the child has arrived (Fox, 2019; Grunow and Veltkamp, 2016; Miller, 2011)? I provide a comparative backdrop to the three focus countries, to contextualise the path dependencies underpinning the enabling parental leave policy and culture in Sweden and the contradictory and ambiguous parental leave policies and cultures in the UK and Portugal. I use data from the 2017 wave of the European Values Study to demonstrate the differences in attitudes towards gender roles between the three countries. I find that overall, Sweden holds the most egalitarian values, followed by the UK, and then Portugal, where the data reflects ‘normative ambiguity’ (Wall, 2015). I then theorise the extent to which each of the three domains of norms shaped fathers’ use of leave in the three countries, through analysis of qualitative data collected in 45 interviews with fathers. I argue that the widespread normative support for gender equality embedded in Swedish culture, alongside the enabling policy framework first introduced in 1974, contributed to the existence of a robust ‘c…
abstract: Fathers’ use of parental leave is a crucial policy issue in relation to gender equality and at the root of gendered caring norms and unequal divisions of labour throughout the life course. Using comparative mixed methods and a framework that conceptualises parenting as gendered and performative (Butler, 1999), this research contributes knowledge of the influence on fathers’ parental leave decisions of three dimensions of norms: policy, discourse and cultural norms; workplace cultures; and peer and family group norms. I compare the effect of social norms on the decisions made by fathers working for the same multinational firm in three countries: the UK, Sweden and Portugal. I argue that a Butlerian understanding can help answer the question frequently posed in the literature: why, when we know couples have egalitarian intentions prior to the birth of a first child, do couples slip back into conservative gender roles once the child has arrived (Fox, 2019; Grunow and Veltkamp, 2016; Miller, 2011)? I provide a comparative backdrop to the three focus countries, to contextualise the path dependencies underpinning the enabling parental leave policy and culture in Sweden and the contradictory and ambiguous parental leave policies and cultures in the UK and Portugal. I use data from the 2017 wave of the European Values Study to demonstrate the differences in attitudes towards gender roles between the three countries. I find that overall, Sweden holds the most egalitarian values, followed by the UK, and then Portugal, where the data reflects ‘normative ambiguity’ (Wall, 2015). I then theorise the extent to which each of the three domains of norms shaped fathers’ use of leave in the three countries, through analysis of qualitative data collected in 45 interviews with fathers. I argue that the widespread normative support for gender equality embedded in Swedish culture, alongside the enabling policy framework first introduced in 1974, contributed to the existence of a robust ‘c…
author: Allen, Juliet Louise
language: eng
keywords: Fathers, Parenting, Performativity, Gender equality, Parental Leave
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2021-09-29
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:00Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.82595