Although it is argued that fatherhood is now a more demanding role than it used to be, it is also claimed that in the context of organizations and management, fathers are invisible as such. In the family sphere, women usually have a dominant position and men’s social roles are relatively limited. Typically, fatherhood is presented within a framework of the father as a part-time, secondary parent. The assumption in managerial and professional posts that the employee should be available 24/7 produces and maintains the view that the ideal employee has no, or very few, responsibilities outside work. In this study, we are interested in fatherhood in the context of organizations and management. The mass media, a powerful force in the creation of social reality in contemporary societies, have the power to support certain versions of fatherhood and exclude others.

In this empirical study, critical discourse analysis is applied. Our data is produced systematically from three influential media sources in Finland between 1990 and 2015. We analyzed 67 articles. We interpreted four developing fatherhood discourses from the viewpoint of gender equality. In addition, we interpreted two discourses that are stationary.

We conclude that fatherhood in the context of organization and management is changing. We found that even though fatherhood discourses in the organizational context are mainly developing toward gender equality, there are at the same time other discourses that are putting the brake on such development.

The portrayal of parents in mainstream media, especially in newspaper media, is a resource for (future) parents to construct ideals of what (‘good’) parenting entails. Research examining parenthood in newspaper articles, however, is scarce and a systematic study of the discourses surrounding parenthood in newspaper media is absent. We aim to fill this gap by exploring German newspaper articles containing the terms ‘parenthood’, ‘motherhood’ and ‘fatherhood’ and examine change over time. As research on the construction of parenthood in newspapers focuses on ‘deviant’ forms of parenthood, we draw on literature on new trends in parenthood, including both ‘intensive motherhood’ and ‘intensive parenthood’. Given these recent trends we hypothesize: (1) an increase in the occurrence of parenthood terms over time and (2) the discourse to change towards more ‘intensive’ forms of parenthood, including a greater focus on the mother-child dyad and ‘engaged fathers’. Our analysis is based on newspaper articles from 1994 to 2015 from the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Applying a combination of relevance and multistage sampling we select articles from the LexisNexis-database. Using the explorative method of text mining, we combine frequency and co-occurrence analysis and topic models to gain a comprehensive understanding of the discourse on parenthood. Initial findings suggest that the frequency of articles containing the parenthood terms increased strongly in 2006, which coincides with significant policy changes in parental leave, and have remained high since. Overall, our analysis is based on a quantitative analysis of qualitative data, enabling an innovative examination of changing parenthood ideals.

Facebook pages and groups about motherhood are currently an important informal support for mothers, allowing them to give and receive information, share experiences, and get advice on various topics about motherhood performance and childhood requirements. However, Facebook reflects many social stereotypes, particularly on social gender roles. In most European countries an intensive model of motherhood is set, which implies a strong affective involvement of the mother towards her children and that she devotes, before and after birth, much of her time, energy, affection and resources to her children’s care, education and development.

Our study aimed to identify the social model of motherhood prevailing in Portugal. Through the content analysis of descriptions and publications of Portuguese pages and groups in 2015 (n = 198), created by or directed to mothers, it identifies practices, attitudes, feelings and goals assigned to mothers on Facebook, as well as expectations regarding the maternal role.

The results showed that the disseminated maternity model assume the high centrality of children, their needs and interests, and assigns high demands to mothers. The selfless mother's dedication is broadly promoted. Mothers´ ambivalence, negative feelings and work-family balance are almost totally absent. Other women’s social roles, namely the professional one, are rarely considered and father’s involvement is residual. In a country where the dual employment family model prevails, the gap between women’s expectations towards motherhood, social demands, and the real conditions for its implementation can bring difficulties for working mothers and would jeopardize their quality of life and emotional well-being.

Uncertainty is a central part of the fertility process. Individuals can be unsure about having children at all, about the number of desired or expected children, and about the timing of first or subsequent births. While there has been done a lot of research on the determinants of intentions and desires to have children, only few studies have explicitly dealt with uncertainty of fertility plans.

The aim of our paper is to extend the knowledge about the effects of life events and biographical insecurity on uncertainty in fertility intentions. Our expectations are theoretically based on Life Course Theory and the Theory of Planned Behaviour. First, we assume that separation from a partner increases uncertainty since behaviour control is decreased. Second, we expect an increase in uncertainty when individuals become unemployed, because this reduces financial security and thus behaviour control. Third, we hypothesize that the birth of the first child increases uncertainty regarding further births because parenting is a new experience and competes with other domains (work, hobbies) of the life course. According to all hypotheses we assume different effects for women and men.

We use data from waves 1-6 of the German Family Panel (pairfam) and apply fixed effects models and logistic regression. Our findings confirm that uncertainty in fertility intentions is of relevant prevalence in our sample and is not stable over the life course. In accordance with our hypotheses uncertainty is connected with changes in partnership, employment status, and parity of children. Furthermore, gender specific differences emerge.