Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article investigates the temporal orders of families as the daily rhythms and schedules when one or both parents work non‐standard hours. Our focus is especially on the often asynchronous times of non‐standard work, on one hand, and of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services and other institutions, on the other hand. The data consist of semi‐structured qualitative interviews of Finnish parents with a four‐year‐old child. The results show that the asynchronous times generated by non‐standard working hours cause a wide range of collisions both in relation to childcare and ECEC and to the division of labour between parents. The parents are 'wrestling', not only because of the asynchrony of their own work but also because of the 'pedagogical rhythm' created by ECEC professionals. However, the parents also find ways to manage time, facilitated by workplace flexibility or spousal negotiations over the sharing of responsibilities.

Objective: This article reports on the associations of fathers' leave take-up with parents' care responsibilities when their child is around four years old. Background: In families with small children women continue to do more parental care work than men. Several studies, however, have suggested that fathers who take up parental leave also take more responsibility for childcare. Method: We applied logistic regression analysis to Finnish survey data collected in 2019 from the mothers and fathers of four-year-old children to find out whether father's take-up and length of leave is related to fathers taking equal or more responsibility for different dimensions of parental responsibilities, including hands-on care, interacting with the child, community responsibility and mental labour. Results: Our descriptive analysis showed that in families with two working parents, parents shared some hands-on care tasks more equally if the father had taken more than three weeks of leave. When only the father was in paid employment, his take-up of leave was associated with taking the child to or from daycare. Conclusion: We conclude that while father's individual leave has unfulfilled potential in dismantling gendered parental care responsibilities, its effects might differ across different dimensions of parental responsibilities.

This article explores Finnish different-sex couples' (n = 12) negotiations on their parental division of labour. Theoretically, the article is based on the literature on gendered parenting practices and relational negotiations. Our discourse analysis reveals how the couples produced 'togetherness' and 'our family' by representing their care practices as agreements, irrespective of whether the care was described as equally shared or distinctly gendered. Disagreements reflecting more individualistic tones, and mainly resulting from the mothers' sense of unfairness, were especially foregrounded when the distribution of household duties was discussed. The analysis also revealed how men cited involved fatherhood as a justification for their lesser responsibility for housework, while women sought to reconcile the contradictory discourses of equal parenting and mother's primacy. Our results show how personal wishes and preferences, work life, family policies and cultural discourses are reflected in couples' negotiations on parenting practices and moral identities pertaining to 'good' motherhood and fatherhood.