In Finland, a Nordic country, fathers are expected to share childcare with the mother of their child from the very outset of their parenthood. In line with these expectations, fathers’ share of care work has increased significantly during recent decades, and thus, equal and shared parenting has become a widespread practice in contemporary Finnish family life. However, research on father involvement in decision-making on childcare responsibilities and arrangements, especially from their point-of-view, is scarce. We aim to address this issue by analyzing the personal accounts of Finnish first-time fathers. Our qualitative analysis investigates how decisions on childcare are made in families, and to what extent mothers and fathers, respectively, are involved in this process. We draw on three different sets of narrative interviews: the first set comprises accounts by 28 fathers interviewed in 2003 (and re-interviews with four fathers in 2011), and the second set longitudinal interviews (2 waves) with 16 fathers conducted in 2008-2011. The third set, comprising accounts by about 30 fathers, will be gathered in autumn 2016. According to our initial, tentative analysis based on the first two data sets, the fathers’ accounts indicate significant involvement in childcare practices rather than in the decision-making process. Some changes were also observed in fathers’ accounts over time, in step with the prevailing discourses on the family in Finnish society. The presented study is a part of the project Finnish Childcare Policies: In/Equality in Focus (2015-2020) funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland.

The amendment of the German Parental Leave legislation in 2007 can be seen as a further step in establishing new forms of fatherhood in Germany. By introducing two ‘partner months’, fathers are encouraged to raise their com-mitment in household- and child-caring activities. Recent data from the federal office of statistics show that between 2006 and 2013 the percentage of fathers, who took parental leave, increased from 3.5% to 32.0%– a historical peak. Nevertheless, related to differences and inequality in terms of education, income, ethnic affiliation or region, fathers make demands on parental leave in very different ways, which influences e.g. the length of the leave or the amount of money they’ll get during that time.

With a qualitative-reconstructive approach, we focus on these (and further) differences in Interviews with couples and reconstruct – based on a comparative and sequential analysis – their negotiations and decision-making concerning the leave of the fathers.

First findings reveal that the couples’ arrangements concerning the fathers parental leave are influenced by anticipated problems within the workplace, as well as attitudes and cultural images about mothering, fathering and parenting. Further new conflicts potentially emerge about the entitlement who defines the standards and quality of family work.

Parental leaves policies have increasingly aimed fathers to use leave to childcare in several European countries. Among other elements, the design of leave schemes is a way to promote fathers to get more involved in reproductive activities. In this study we have researched Spanish rural police since this profession is mainly developed by men and it is linked to macho stereotypes. We have dug into fathers’ discourse about their experience, motivations, reactions and consequences of taking a leave alone. This paper is framed in a wider project about fathers on leave alone funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2013-44097-R). We have performed fifteen in-depth interviews to fathers who work as rural police which have been on leave at least during a month while their partners were on a paid work. Sample method has been snow ball sampling and, the fieldwork has been carried out in 2014. We have analyzed the interviews using codes and families with the software Atlas.ti. Our preliminary findings show rural police fathers did not considered taking a leave alone as a form to change roles but as a tool to balance the familiar strategy. When advantages are perceived in taking a leave alone, the traditional father role is not a key to decide. Reactions at the work place were heterogeneous, ranging from disapprovement to indiference.

Numerous studies have focused on how and why parents share parental leave or care work in a gendered way, and how they experience their parenting tasks. So far, relatively little is known about how couples rationalize and justify their division of employment and care work when they become parents. The study focuses on Austrian first-time parents’ negotiation, implementation and evaluation of distributing care responsibilities when arranging their parental leave. Austria provides a comparatively flexible and long paid parental leave, thus favours traditional gender roles. Through a lens of social constructivism and by acknowledging the multidimensional character of parental responsibilities, I delineate different types of rationales behind the parents’ leave arrangements and examine how they alter throughout the transition to parenthood. Empirically, this research is therefore rooted in a qualitative longitudinal study in Austria. Semi-structured interviews (n=66) were conducted with mothers and fathers separately before the birth of their child, as well as six months and two years after (2013-2015). The sample covers parents from diverse educational and socio-economic backgrounds, with different forms of family status and use of parental leave. After a thematic analysis of all interviews, an in-depth sequential analysis following a hermeneutic approach was applied to the data on a case-level with a subsequent cross-case analysis. Preliminary findings suggest that parents tend to negotiate their arrangement of parental leave mainly from an economic point of view and seek to maximize their financial resources. However, the rationalization strategies are strongly underpinned by gendered ascriptions of caring abilities and responsibilities.