Fathers’ Use of Parental Leave and Union Dissolution

Trude Lappegård (), Ann-Zofie Duvander, Gerda Neyer, Ida Viklund, Synøve N. Andersen and Ólöf Garðarsdóttir
Additional contact information
Trude Lappegård: University of Oslo
Ann-Zofie Duvander: Stockholm University
Gerda Neyer: Stockholm University
Ida Viklund: Stockholm University
Synøve N. Andersen: Statistics Norway
Ólöf Garðarsdóttir: University of Iceland

European Journal of Population, 2020, vol. 36, issue 1, No 1, 25 pages

Abstract: Abstract With increasing union dissolution and changing gender behaviour, questions have emerged about possible links between gender equality and union stability. The aim of this article is to examine whether and how early fathers’ involvement in child-rearing is associated with union dissolution in three Nordic countries. All three countries have reserved part of their parental leave to be used by one parent in order to promote fathers’ engagement in child-rearing. Our analysis uses fathers’ parental leave as a proxy for his involvement, and we distinguish between fathers who take no leave (“non-conforming fathers”), fathers who take only the reserved part (“policy-conforming fathers”) and fathers who take more than the reserved part (“gender-egalitarian-oriented fathers”). We find that couples in which the father uses parental leave have a lower risk of union dissolution than couples in which the father takes no leave. The pattern is consistent for all countries, for the whole study period 1993–2011, and for cohabiting and married couples. However, we do not find support for asserting that the couples with greatest gender equality, in which fathers take longer leave than the policy reserves, are the most stable unions, as the pattern is not uniform in the three countries. We attribute this to the fact that gender equality within the family in the Nordic countries is still an ongoing process, and the relationship between gender behaviour and union stability is still in flux.

Keywords: Union dissolution; Gender behaviour; Father involvement; Parental leave; Nordic countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10680-019-09518-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurpop:v:36:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10680-019-09518-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10680

DOI: 10.1007/s10680-019-09518-z

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Population is currently edited by Helga A.G. de Valk

More articles in European Journal of Population from Springer, European Association for Population Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().