Studies of Men’s Involvement in the Family—Part 1

What Factors Increase Men’s Involvement in the Family?

To appreciate the articles in this special issue, consider Figure 1, which outlines schematically the factors likely to increase sharing of household tasks, and identifies likely outcomes. The article by Goldscheider, Goldscheider, and Gonzalez in this issue focuses on factors linked to gender role attitudes. Two other articles that are part of this project examine in detail other factors linked with gender role attitudes, including Kaufman and Bernhardt (2012), which relies on the longitudinal dimension of the data set to focus on changes in gender role attitudes that might be expected from changes in family statuses, and Gähler and Oláh (2010), which examines the effects of family structure and maternal employment on men’s and women’s gender role attitudes. All three articles have found that it is important to distinguish attitudes that focus on women’s place in the public sphere from those that tap attitudes toward men’s potential involvement in the family (cf. Goldscheider, Oláh, & Puur, 2010). These studies reinforce our view of the gender revolution as having two quite separate halves; many who are comfortable with increases in female labor force participation might not favor, or even have thought of, men’s roles in the home.

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Figure 1.

Antecedents and sequelae of men’s family involvement.

The article by Goldscheider et al. (in this issue) finds that more educated respondents have more egalitarian gender role attitudes, consistent with other research (e.g., Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). It shows as well that those who are parents hold consistently less egalitarian attitudes, although in this analysis, it is not clear whether those who become parents in this relatively young sample are less egalitarian (selectivity) or whether parenthood decreases egalitarian attitudes. The article by Kaufman and Bernhardt (2012), in contrast, is able to show that for most gender-role related attitudes, becoming a parent does not make Swedish young adults less egalitarian than they were prior to becoming parents.

The Goldscheider et al. article is more unusual in examining the antecedents of gender role attitudes (and sharing both housework and child care), focusing on the varying relationships between religiosity and gender role attitudes. Although most research has found that the more religious are more likely to reject egalitarian patterns, likely because gender equality in the public sphere of the work place takes women out of the home and hence weakens families, there has been an extremely strong emphasis in Sweden on men’s getting more involved in the family and its tasks. Thus, increasing men’s family involvement can be thought of as “profamily”; hence, the familism embedded in religiosity might favor gender equality in the home. To address this possibility, the article asks whether the relationship between religiosity and gender role attitudes might differ between Swedes whose religiosity is rooted in religious denominations linked with more traditional gender roles (e.g., the substantial numbers of Turkish Moslems and members of more fundamentalist and conservative Christian groups, e.g., Catholics and Orthodox Christians) and those whose religiosity is rooted in the dominant Swedish (Lutheran) Church. If so, the profamily dimension of religiosity might in fact reinforce gender equality. The results suggest that this is in fact the case, with particularly dramatic findings for gender role attitudes that focus attention on men’s role in the home.

The next three articles in this special issue on men’s involvement in the family also use the YAPS data, and each examines the connections between holding more egalitarian gender role attitudes and different aspects of gendered behavior. Evertsson examines how closely attitudes predict actual subsequent sharing of the private sphere (housework and child care); Duvander examines how gender role attitudes shape subsequent sharing of parental leave (still very much gendered in Sweden); and Brandén examines how holding egalitarian gender role attitudes shapes couples’ migration decisions.

Evertsson uses the couple data available in the 2009 interview, and shows that it is indeed important to distinguish housework from child care, although these two behaviors are linked positively. Thus men spend more time in housework when they live in a family with a more gender equal division of child care. She finds that women’s gender role attitudes are linked with their own hours in housework and child care, with more egalitarian women cutting down on their hours, but there is no link between women’s gender role attitudes and their male partner’s housework hours. In contrast, when men hold relatively egalitarian attitudes, not only do they spend more hours in housework and child care, but their female partner spends fewer hours. Evertsson concludes that an articulated gender consciousness, particularly among men, seems to be a prerequisite for a gender equal division of unpaid work, even in gender-egalitarian Sweden.

The gendered pattern of taking parental leave is prevalent in Sweden, although of course, more gender equal than in the many countries that only provide maternity leave. Duvander finds that the sharing of parental leave is responsive to men’s gender role attitudes but not to women’s, consistent with Evertsson’s results. A major concern of this analysis was to separate out the extent to which men’s use of parental leave reflected their egalitarian approach to family life versus how much it reflected a more general familistic orientation. This has been a frequent concern among studies of men’s use of parental leave in those countries where it is relatively available and not costly, because levels of salary replacement are high. Hence, her models include not just gender role attitudes but also items that reflect more general familistic orientations. Interestingly, she found that a more familistic orientation increased women’s length of parental leave but not men’s; for men, it was in fact gender role attitudes that had a significant effect. As could be expected, economic concerns were more important for men in the decision of how much leave to take than was the case for women, as it was found that an orientation toward the economic rewards from work significantly reduces the likelihood of a long parental leave for men. Therefore Duvander concludes that reforms aiming at a more gender-equal use of the parental leave ought to create clear economic incentives for such behavior.

The final YAPS article (Brandén) examines how gender role attitudes might affect gendered migration patterns. As might be expected, she finds that although couples generally expect to move more to accommodate men’s rather than women’s career opportunities, gender role attitudes shape respondents’ willingness to move for their partner, with particularly pronounced gender differences among nonegalitarian respondents. In contrast, gender ideology and division of household responsibilities do not explain differences in actual migration behavior, that is, to move with one’s partner to pursue own or partner’s work or education. Migration decisions seem to be male-centered in two ways: (a) women are more willing than men to follow their partner in the hypothetical event of a partner’s career advancement opportunity, and (b) mothers’ likelihood of migration for their own work or education is lower compared with fathers’.

Hence, the second half of the gender revolution is having an impact, but it is not yet clear that increased men’s involvement in the home is good for the family. The final article in this collection, by Barstad, shows this clearly, as we will discuss in the next section. One of the articles in the following issue reinforces this conclusion.

Is Men’s Involvement Good for the Family?

Why might men’s involvement be good for the family? Evidence is accumulating that after more than a half century of growth in female labor force participation, which has been linked in the research literature with low fertility (Billari & Kohler, 2004), together with increased union dissolution (Ruggles, 1997), many trends are turning around, long-observed linkages are weakening, and some are even reversing (Myrskylä, Kohler, & Billari, 2011). Most dramatically, the industrialized countries that once had the highest fertility and the lowest levels of female labor force participation now, despite still having the lowest levels of female labor force participation, have the lowest levels of fertility (Billari & Kohler, 2004). Others are finding that union stability is actually increasing, particularly among the more highly educated, both in Scandinavia (Hoem, 1997; Lyngstad, 2004) and in the United States (McLanahan, 2004; Raley & Bumpass, 2003).

There is increasing evidence that greater male involvement in home making and child care has the potential for increasing fertility, both in countries with “lowest low” fertility such as Italy (Pinnelli & Fiori, 2006), and countries that provide major support for families from the state and employers (normally mandated by the state), such as Sweden (Goldscheider, Bernhardt, & Brandén 2013). The gender equality–fertility link has been increasingly widely studied, both in individual countries and comparatively (for recent reviews, see Goldscheider et al., 2010; Goldscheider et al., 2013; Neyer, Lappegård, & Vignoli, 2013).

There is also increasing evidence that men’s engagement in the home stabilizes unions. Demographers and their intellectual cousins, economists and structural sociologists, have largely ignored the possibility that there may be a link between greater gender equality and greater union stability, in part because they are so convinced that the relationship is the reverse. And in many countries and at many times, they were likely right. During the first half of the gender revolution, it was married women’s entry into the labor force that appeared to be destabilizing gender relationships, because women’s new independence allowed them to leave difficult marriages (Johnson & Skinner, 1986; Ruggles, 1997).

As the relationship between female labor force participation (gender equity in the public sphere) and fertility appears to have reversed, however, it is likely that this should also be the case for the relationship between women’s labor force participation (if it comes with gender equity in the private sphere) and union dissolution, as well. In each case, what appears to be happening is that the first half of the gender revolution, the “antifamily” half, is giving way to the second half, the “profamily” half (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991). A recent article (Sigle-Rushton, 2010) reexamines the studies by economists, starting with Becker (1977), and finds that, at least in the United Kingdom, fathers’ home production stabilizes marriage regardless of mothers’ employment status. Oláh and Gähler (in press) also find that couples in Sweden among whom the male partner participates more in domestic tasks are less likely to separate. This result, however, may depend on context: Although research shows this pattern in the United States, male participation appears to increase union dissolution in Germany (Cooke, 2006). Perhaps the balance between the increased strains on men and relief for women might tip in the other direction in situations in which few men participate in their homes.

As a result, family demographers are increasingly examining questions that have long interested family sociologists and psychologists, together with related scholars, to understand why men’s involvement with domestic tasks might be linked with increased women’s happiness (e.g., Cox & Paley, 2003), and querying whether this comes at the expense of men’s happiness. This is Barstad’s question: Is the relationship between happiness and doing housework a zero-sum game, with whoever does less being more happy? According to this logic, women gain in terms of relationship quality when housework is shared equally, whereas men lose. Barstad finds, in contrast, that men who share household chores with their partners are less dissatisfied with how housework is shared even than men who do little housework. Compared with taking no or little part in routine housework, men who do as much such housework as their partner score equally well on an index for relationship quality. Thus, they are not more unhappy in their relationship (and their partners are more happy). The only concern that emerged from the analysis is that men who do more housework are more likely to think that their relationship might end. His finding might reflect the fact that such men realize how valuable they are in the partner market.

Conclusion

The motivation for this special issue (and the one to follow) is two-fold. First, we want to highlight research on men’s increased involvement in their families, focusing both on the antecedents that are linked with their level of involvement and on the consequences that may follow. Second, we want to understand the extent to which such research is consistent with our theoretical view that the ongoing gender revolution really has a second half. When the “separate spheres” regime of gender relationships was broached by women’s increased participation in paid work, which strained the family, that was not “the” gender revolution but only its first half. The second half, in which the separation between the spheres is finally dissolved by men’s taking an active role in their families, contributing to the care of their children and their homes, is still to come, and it will strengthen the family.

Research on Scandinavia, in particular, can be extremely fruitful, as both halves of the gender revolution are more advanced than in other industrialized countries. Even in Scandinavia, of course, the change has not been instantaneous. The gender revolution is characterized as “incomplete” (Esping-Anderson, 2009), as “unfinished” (Gerson, 2010), and sometimes even as “stalled” (too many to cite). One might even worry that a world of independent living for young adults might compete successfully against the stresses of working through changing gender roles (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991).

As these articles show, however, there are grounds for optimism about the family, as men with more egalitarian attitudes toward our gendered homes share more housework and child care (Evertsson), take more parental leave when their children are born (Duvander), think about decisions about family moves in a more egalitarian manner (Brandén), and strengthen their couple relationships (Barstad). Even powerful institutions that promote familism, like religion, which have resisted the first half of the gender revolution, can appreciate the family strengthening promised by new gender roles in the family, the second half of the gender revolution, as it were (Goldscheider et al.). Those in the next issue contribute to this theoretical understanding.