Fathers and flexible parental leave

Introduction

Over the past few decades the issue of reconciling work and family has been given a prominent place both on the policy agenda and in research in most Western countries (Knijn and Smith, 2009). Nordic work-family policy and practice have been lauded as creating a modern-day utopia (Gornick and Meyers, 2009) in which the needs of parental caring and labour-market work are equally valued. In the Nordic countries responsibility for care is neither lodged entirely with the family nor commodified; rather, care is shared between the family and the welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 2009). Paid parental leave is designed so that fathers in particular are given an incentive to take it. Norway was the first of the Nordic welfare states to introduce a non-transferable quota for fathers as part of the parental leave system. During the 22 years that the Norwegian father’s quota has existed it has been extended and is currently 10 weeks. Importantly, the architecture of the leave system has been changed from a fairly rigid provision to a flexible policy, so that the current design of the father’s quota offers a menu of choices when it comes to the use of leave.

Both research (Bruning and Plantenga, 1999; Ray et al., 2010; Rostgaard, 2002) and policy documents (Prop. 64 L, 2011–2012) tend to regard flexibility in leave arrangements in a positive way, viewing the opportunity mothers and fathers have to control the timing of their leave taking as having the potential to increase the use of leave, particularly by fathers. This understanding of flexible leave seems to have much in common with the view of flexible work as strengthening individual employees’ ability to find solutions that allow for work-life integration. Flexibility in leave arrangements tends to be taken for granted as a general and positive solution for combining work with childcare, although a mix of aspects has been identified (cf. Duvander, 2013). There is, however, a need for in-depth studies of its meaning and the way it works in different contexts.

In their article assessing generosity and gender equality in parental leave designs in 21 countries, Ray et al. (2010) point out that flexibility is a component that needs more research. They remark that surprisingly little research has been undertaken that directly links the design of leave policies to their outcomes (2010: 209). This article responds to their call for research, particularly given the limited knowledge of how flexible leave is managed by working fathers.

The Norwegian parental leave system for fathers

Parental leave for fathers on a take it or leave it basis is a welfare state instrument meant to create caring fathers. The explicit intention of the father’s quota is to strengthen the father-child relationship and contribute to gender equality in both family and working life. As with Norwegian parental leave in general, the father’s quota is generously compensated.

As Table 1 shows, the length of the father’s quota is 10 weeks of a total parental leave period of 49 weeks with 100 per cent wage compensation up to a ceiling. Most of the parental leave weeks are available to both mothers and fathers. Almost all eligible fathers (over 90%) take all or part of the father’s quota (Grambo and Myklebø, 2009). The part of the parental leave that may be shared between parents is mostly taken by mothers. From the age of one, Norwegian children have the right to attend kindergartens; and in 2013, 80 per cent of children aged one to two years old did so, enabling both parents to return to work. Parents who choose childcare at home receive a low ‘homecare allowance’ until the child’s second birthday.

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Table 1.

Norwegian parental leave. Distribution of weeks with 100% wage compensation between mothers and fathers.

Year	Mother’s quota	Divisible part	Father’s quota	Total
2014	3* + 10	26	10	49

*

Mothers have the right to three extra weeks of leave before birth.

When the father’s quota was first introduced, it provided for four weeks that had to be taken continuously within the child’s first year. Since then, choice and flexibility have increasingly been promoted in Norwegian political debates and in 2007 the father’s quota was made more flexible. One type of flexibility is part-time leave combined with part-time work, which means that the leave weeks can be distributed over a longer period of time until the child is three years old. The second form of flexibility is ‘deferred’ leave, which means that all or part of the father’s quota may be split into separate blocks of time. These two forms of flexible leave may also be combined so that, for instance, periods of full-time leave may alternate with periods of part-time leave. The alternative to flexible leave is continuous leave on a full-time basis. Fathers’ part-time leave may be concurrent with mothers’ part-time leave and flexible working hours; and a block of the father’s quota time may be taken together with the mother’s holidays from work.

According to a parliamentary proposal (Ot.prp. nr. 104, 2004–2005: 28), the most important rationale for the flexible father’s quota is ‘to make it simpler to combine work and childcare’. The government espoused flexible leave to make taking leave more attractive for fathers, especially after its increase in length. Flexible leave was intended to help achieve the broader goals of the father’s quota.

Flexible use of the father’s quota has increased since it was first introduced. Official statistics (Nav.no, 2015) show that in 2014, 25 per cent of eligible fathers chose part-time leave, whereas 5 per cent of mothers did so. A longer father’s quota combined with an unrestricted opportunity to use it flexibly may have influenced fathers’ patterns of using the quota.

Gender and flexible work-family reconciliations

Since there is little research on flexible leave, the literature on flexible work arrangements may provide useful information for this study. As Sennett (1998) has pointed out, flexibility is generally viewed positively, but there are many types of flexible work arrangements and all types of flexibility do not have the same status.

The amount of time spent at work is a key part of ranking flexibility types, and long working hours tend to have a higher status than part-time work. Full-time work is a male standard, as working overtime or long hours has been a traditional way of making a career; and the connection between male identity and working long hours is salient (Rapoport et al., 2002). The time flexibility most often used by women, part-time work, has been categorized as atypical and deviant from the standard working time (Epstein et al., 1999). In many countries the working-time regime implies that women, especially mothers, work part-time and men full-time and/or long hours (Fagan, 2001).

Working-time and work-family conflict vary among European countries. The Netherlands and the UK are quite similar, with a large gap between men’s and women’s working hours, while in Sweden this gap is much smaller (Cousins and Tang, 2004). Norway’s pattern is similar to Sweden’s (Kitterød, 2006). Despite national differences in the levels of part-time work among women and men, part-time work is universally gendered and not a common way fathers use to combine care and work (Sheridan, 2004). Indeed, fatherhood and flexible working have been called a ‘contradiction in terms’ (Burnett et al., 2011). Low usage rates stem in part from men’s fears of negative career repercussions (Blair-Loy and Wharton, 2004).

Research on the relationship between work and family has primarily been concerned with mothers and has viewed flexibility as important when dealing with complex and competing time requirements in the organization of day-to-day life (Hill et al., 2001; Shockley and Allen, 2007). Fathers who are active carers work fewer hours than other fathers if their partner is the main earner and they are less likely to work in occupations which require long hours (Kanji, 2013).

Home working is another type of flexible work arrangement. Halford (2006) found that fathers working from home were positive about the possibility of taking more responsibility for the care of their children. They still considered themselves to be ‘at work’ and regarded their fathering as ‘helping out’, however. Thus, while working from home may have changed fathering practices and discourses to a certain degree, the father’s role as a secondary carer still remains. Similarly, Craig et al. (2012) found that despite the opportunity for family friendly scheduling offered by home-based self-employment, fathers do not reschedule their hours significantly. Fathers strategically use flexible working schedules to raise their earnings and pursue higher-level jobs, while mothers use them to achieve some balance between work and family. Mothers tend to arrange their schedules around caring, while fathers conform more closely to the standard workday. Moreover, women tend to have their careers damaged (Smithson et al., 2004). The flexibility offered by non-standard working hours does not help parents balance work and care more equally (Craig and Powell, 2011).

On the contrary, flexible working-time arrangements may result in employees working too much since boundaries between family and work are often difficult to manage (Kvande, 2007), especially within ‘post-bureaucratic knowledge work’ (Alvesson, 2004). These organizations often offer employees a higher degree of self-governance, while at the same time placing great demands on their time and commitment (Blair-Loy and Wharton, 2004). This situation creates tension for fathers and, as described by Kvande (2012), forces them to give priority to their work in spite of their wish to ‘get priorities right, putting family before work’.

Flexible parental leave

Studies of shorter leave earmarked for fathers document that it may function as a boundary setter against work and enable fathers to give priority to childcare (Brandth and Kvande, 2001, 2003b). Studies of other caring schemes that are open for parental choice have demonstrated that the choices easily develop into a bonus for working life because it is difficult to define clear boundaries around work. In many professions, work invades family life and employees are found to work more than indicated by their stated proportion of leave and work. This evidence suggests that flexible caring schemes that aim to get fathers involved in childcare are ineffective because they open space for negotiations with working life and undermine the limits on the demands of work that a non-flexible quota creates (Brandth and Kvande, 2001, 2003b). Regardless of organizational type, an earmarked, non-transferable parental leave is found to be effective in involving fathers (Haas and Rostgaard, 2011; O’Brien et al., 2007), but its flexible use has not been addressed.

While there is a considerable amount of literature on how parental leave is used, there is little evidence about the personal experiences of fathers and how various leave designs affect their care practices. A comparison between fathers who took leave on a full-time basis with fathers who took it as part-time and/or with the mother at home demonstrates that caring for the child by themselves establishes an interaction between father and child that significantly affects the content of the caring (Brandth and Kvande, 2003a). Being present for their children on a continuous basis gave fathers a ‘slow time’ experience in which time is controlled by the needs of the child. In this situation the father develops a need-oriented care competence and becomes emotionally absorbed and competent in reading the child. Wall (2014) reports a similar process in a study of Portuguese fathers who took leave alone for one month. The fathers describe their learning process as going beyond that of being a ‘helper’ to taking responsibility and learning emotional care. They also report a stronger connection with the child.

Another study of how relationships between fathers and children develop during the leave period claims that the fathers set aside their own needs and that their emotions, empathies and relational competence are sharpened (Bungum, 2013). Concentration is on the child, as small children require presence and attention (2013: 71). When fathers do not immerse themselves in childcare during their leave, for example by working at the same time, their care work is monitored much more by the mother. In such situations, fathers seem to express a greater interest in older children (Brandth and Kvande, 2003a, 2012).

Summary and research focus

This article explores how flexible use of the father’s quota affects fathers’ caring. Flexibility means working part-time combined with part-time leave. Bearing in mind the literature that has pointed to the norms and practices of full-time work for fathers, the problems of boundary setting, the inability of flexible work to produce changes in fathers’ allocation of time to care and the effects of part-time care, the article investigates three research questions:

Data and methodology

The article is part of an ongoing interview study of 37 cohabiting or married heterosexual fathers. The interviewing began in late 2011 and was conducted mostly in 2012–13. Some participants were found through the researchers’ professional networks and the snowballing method was employed as interviewed fathers were asked if they knew of other fathers who might be contacted. Informational letters to potential participants explained the objectives of the project, the ethical rules governing the research and the rights of participants. To keep interviewees’ identities anonymous, names were not recorded and pseudonyms were used. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted from one to two hours; most fathers were interviewed in their homes. Questions included parental leave choices, the employment and occupation of both mother and father, fathering ideals and practices and father-child relations. All the quotations from the interviews used in this article have been translated from Norwegian into English by the authors.

The criterion for choosing participants was that they had become fathers after the father’s quota period was extended from six to 10 weeks in 2009. (Flexible leave was introduced two years earlier.) This sample was designed to capture fathers’ experiences with a fairly long and flexible quota.

As this article concerns fathers’ use of flexible leave, fathers who had taken leave on a part-time or periodical basis were singled out from the total sample. Of these 20 interviewees, 13 had used part-time leave, while seven split the quota into separate blocks of time. Fourteen of them held a college or university degree and worked as engineers, teachers, consultants or researchers. The other six held jobs as craftsmen, salesmen or office workers. The dominance of middle-class fathers may represent a limitation of this sample, but as the occupational range is wide, the data may illustrate many different types of experiences with flexible leave. For instance, fathers in knowledge work might be affected by the seductiveness and autonomy of their work, while for craftsmen working hours are more standard. Nevertheless, another sample with a larger share of fathers in manufacturing, shift work or shops might represent an even more complex picture. It is thus important to consider the limitation of the findings and at the same time appreciate the knowledge produced on how flexible parental leave works for fathers from a variety of middle-class occupations.

According to the Norwegian eligibility rules, each parent earns the right to parental leave through employment. Hence, they had been permanently employed before the birth of the child. All the mothers were also employed after their leave, some of them temporarily on a part-time basis. All the fathers lived with the mother and child. The children involved might be the first, second or third child and they ranged from one to three years of age at the time of the interview. All the interviewees lived in one of the larger cities in Norway.

The interviews were coded and analysed according to a method based on a step-by-step inductive analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Three procedures addressing the issue of coding may be described: first the interviews were read by each author separately with the aim of extracting each father’s individual parental leave story. Categories such as fathers’ motives and uses of and experiences with flexible leave were the main themes in this reading. Many issues emerged and the second procedure involved interpreting these themes in dialogue with literature and theory. In this phase of analysis and interpretation the authors had continuous discussions, resolving confusions, evaluating various explanations, disconfirming and confirming evidence and searching for negative cases before reaching consensus. The final step was carried out to connect issues that could contribute to a coherent story for presentation in this article. This way of working together, using each other as validity checks, increased our confidence in the findings.

Flexible leave and problems of boundary setting

This section addresses the first research question regarding how the boundary-setting ability of the flexible father’s quota is affected by fathers’ different ways of taking leave.

Some of the fathers could not be completely absent from work. For example, Magnus and Lars were independent business operators. Lars, the co-owner of a house painting company, stated that he could not take 10 weeks of continuous leave. ‘I can’t be off that long. It’s simply impossible. I have to be there.’ His solution was first to take three weeks together with the mother and then to combine the rest with work. On some days he would take his daughter with him to work, while other days he would work from home. He explained how the leave could be organized to fit his work responsibilities: ‘You can, for example, take leave for two or three weeks and then you can work; and then you can take another two or three weeks and then you can do one or two days a week for a period of time. It actually depends…’ He recommended flexibility as both deferred leave and part-time leave, often in combination, but depending on the demands of work.

Magnus combined the father’s quota with working 20 per cent part-time during the entire period because in his job as a freelance photographer it was important to maintain customer contact and to book assignments. Like Lars, Magnus could not be completely absent from his work for an extended period. Part-time leave was his solution. He explained,

I see how the flexibility allowed the possibility to work. If I had not been able to carry on working, I would have had to just give them [the customers] away. So I feel that flexibility is important, because I simply could not take three whole months, really. I know people who are working as stockbrokers, and they can’t take leave just like that. Then they would have to take their kid to work with them, and they probably would have trouble making the best deals. I think flexibility is good; otherwise it [the leave] would simply be lost. You need the flexibility to keep your job. I’m very glad we have the flexibility.

It could also be difficult to be away for longer periods of time if fathers had just started in a new job. This was the case for Harald, who changed jobs during the baby’s first year and needed to familiarize himself with his new work responsibilities. After taking three weeks of the father’s quota with the mother, he used the remainder as part-time leave so he could be at work continuously. Those fathers who were working at universities and colleges scheduled their leave around their teaching. Arne, for instance, took most of the father’s quota in the spring when his lectures had ended and his students were working on their papers.

Flexibility means that it is up to the parents to decide how they want to organize their leave, but the demands of work influence their choices. Carl, a craftsman, stated, ‘It was probably us who decided … but the way I felt then, this leave had to be taken in part according to how much pressure there was at work, really. Adapt it a little.’ Because the company always lacked skilled people, they kept trying to negotiate with Carl to get him back on the job when he was on leave. The leave is statutory, but this type of negotiation might be stimulated by a flexibility that allows both part-time leave and postponement. ‘I took one week to start with, but then there was always something … there was always some problem that I needed to go back to work on, and they were always proposing that I could work half days and so on. It really got messy.’ Being unable to shield the period of leave from work was a recurring issue among the fathers who had used flexible leave.

Nicolai, a graduate engineer with a doctoral degree, represented the most glaring example of what might happen if the worker is unable to draw boundaries against work demands. His agreement with his employer was that he would work 80 per cent over approximately one year. It was acceptable for his employer to have one day of leave a week, but not as a fixed day because they wanted Nicolai to be available for meetings. The agreement was that his leave would be adapted to this demand. Therefore he ‘was planning to take it [the father’s quota] a little bit every day, really, even if we couldn’t do this properly in a formal sense. I might just come to work a bit later and leave a little earlier’. Initially, this scheme worked, but not when he was promoted to a new position with managerial responsibilities. He stated,

Then it was virtually impossible to take the 20 per cent. My period of leave was to have ended at the start of February, but I hardly took … I really needed to work hard to manage it. I could actually have worked far more than full-time during this period, so … I would have needed to drop the job to manage to take the leave. Now when the period agreed upon ended I still had more than three weeks that I hadn’t used. So now I’m trying to work less than full-time and arrive a bit late and leave a little early; but even today, I still have, say, almost three weeks of leave left, so I’m taking it as one hour here and another hour there.

Stretching his leave past the child’s first year meant that he could take his two children to day care later in the morning and fetch them earlier. Taking an hour here and there, however, creates a situation in which work and not caring wins the battle for time. Nicolai took his father’s quota but was unable to draw boundaries against the demands of the job, which meant his leave was consumed ‘in the heat of the battle’. One of the fathers, an electronics engineer, who was in no doubt about the result of his own bad choice, said, ‘It turned out to be more than 50 per cent working, really, that’s for sure! It really was.’ He had agreed with his employer on a 50 per cent father’s quota, but found himself working more than the 50 per cent.

Ragnar, an electrician working for a building company, represents an example of how boundary setting is possible. He combined leave and work at an even split, 50–50, as his wife worked part-time, and he stated that he found it easy to draw the line against his job. ‘If I was home then I was home! … I worked two days one week and three days the next, so I didn’t do half days at work. If I was off then I was off!’ Ragnar was the exception among those who took the father’s quota as part-time leave, however. His experience was different because he managed to prevent the job from eating into his leave time. The character of his work as a craftsman may have made that possible, but Carl, who was also a craftsman, was not able to resist the pressure from his employer to spend more time at work.

Creating the possibility of combining work with caring is what flexible leave is all about. Fathers on flexible leave used work as their point of departure when they made their choices. They attempted to optimize their choices, but faced problems when work assumed the leading role.

Half-way fathering

This section analyses the second research question, regarding how flexible leave affects fathers’ care practices. Approximately one third of the fathers who had used flexible leave schemes were quite pleased with their choice after the leave was over. They were the ones who had used periodical leave and divided the father’s quota into two or three blocks of some length. One of them, Arne, married to a musician, was the father of three children and had used the father’s quota for periods of four, six and 10 weeks in succession. For the third child, after the father’s quota had been expanded to 10 weeks, he had split it in two. He stated, ‘My experience is that it is nice to have father’s leave and stay home, so that’s what I’ll remember … I would really have liked to have had longer leave. This is about finding a good solution with my wife.’ With all their experience, they had found that taking leave in two parts worked well for them; he had two continuous periods of five weeks, each of which was not interrupted by work, while his wife was on tour.

Gustav had first a period of full-time leave and then part-time leave for a second period when his wife worked shifts as a nurse. He was also pleased with his choice, but he described full-time leave the most positively:

I would say that the first period, when I had this nice daddy-on-leave feeling where I was at home alone and had the ongoing run of the household with Emilia … it was just like I had envisioned. Bliss, really! It was very nice with time to spare and calm and lots of nice things.

Part-time leave appeared to cause the biggest problems, and the fathers on part-time leave were the ones who were dissatisfied with their choice. They felt that the part-time father’s quota did not enable them to combine childcare and work. Gustav stated:

I didn’t envision that there would be so much stress because I was actually also at work at the same time. So this is a thing I … I don’t think I would do this again. It wasn’t really leave because I never got into this as a routine. Then it wasn’t really work either, because I couldn’t go to work every day. So it became very … it was really two things that both were sort of half-way and that was really not a good solution.

From his perspective, neither work nor care benefitted from part-time leave, as his job disturbed his focus on childcare and vice versa. Since this was his first child, he felt it was particularly important to establish good routines. ‘That you establish a routine every day, if you get up and do this and that, then I think it would be easier. Then I think there’s less work too. For example clothing and that stuff, and that she has, like … that you make it flow.’ It was this flow in the caring that he missed. He did not experience ‘the slow time’ in which the child’s needs directed how time was spent and fewer other things had to be done simultaneously. He believed that totally disregarding the job during the period of leave would have been much better because that would have avoided ‘phone calls and emails’.

Ben, who stayed home on leave for two or three days a week alternating with his wife who worked part-time as a teacher, recounted how it worked in his case:

Monday I went to work, Tuesday I was home, Wednesday I went to work again, and like this … You felt that when you were at work, you were always lagging behind. You would bring some of this grind home with you, and then you’re home and the baby is crying and then you need to feed it. It was more of a hassle for me than not, so if I were to do it again … but let’s be clear, we’re not having any more babies! But if I were to do it again, I would have chosen to take the full leave in one go, could have made some plans, perhaps travelled to see grandparents, done more trivial things together. You don’t have that option in an off-on situation.

He described ‘the quick time’ quite well, with many interruptions from other things, when pronouncing this judgement on his experience with part-time leave:

It simply didn’t work; it was a horrible lesson to learn. Really, having such a part-time set-up … In my job, customers call early and late, mail pops in, inquiries come in … I muted the phone eventually, and then I saw 13 unanswered calls and there were texts. So this was far too poorly organized by me. I must admit that my boss at work told me to do what was best for me, so I had free rein to do this as I wanted, but as it turned out, this was not a success.

Only in retrospect did he see that he made a poor choice when opting for part-time leave and he had to accept the consequences of this choice. It was clear that part-time leave demanded strict organization. He recommended that others

put the job entirely on the sidelines! Even if you’re in sales, you just have to say that this is how it is during this period of time! Just put everything else aside and say to yourself: now you’re taking your father’s quota for so and so many weeks and nothing else. That’s my hot tip.

In the words of a father currently on leave with his nine-month-old son who was interviewed by one of the larger Norwegian newspapers: ‘This is a period where you have the time to be 100 per cent with the children. The rest of our lives means much work and stress, but this time is reserved for us. I think it’s healthy!’ (Aftenposten, 2013: 5).

Many fathers on a part-time father’s quota said that it felt as if they were working full-time, while additionally having a one-year-old to care for. ‘I needed to switch off and on all the time,’ said Nicolai, who was on leave corresponding to one day a week while his wife returned to work. ‘You can’t work normally, so it was stressful. It might be my job, because I’m doing research, and then you’re working more than the hours you spend sitting in your office. So you must be strong and not check your email when you’re home. It wasn’t easy.’ Julio, who took his father’s quota as part-time leave and often worked from home, stated: ‘The plan, or idea, was that I shouldn’t lose contact with the job, but it didn’t work out in practice.’ Part-time leave did not allow these fathers to become fully immersed in the day-to-day chores with children and home. The chaotic life they were describing, attempting to handle both work and care, undermined the fathers’ chances to establish autonomous care routines. ‘Multitasking’ by combining part-time care with part-time work did not supply the continuous slow time that favoured childcare. As a result, part-time use of the father’s quota confirmed the mother’s position as the primary carer in the family, for she needed to be available. Part-time leave until the child is three years old seems to imply a weakening of the effects of earmarking fathers’ leave.

Avoidant fathering

Previous literature has shown that a fairly short, earmarked and non-flexible father’s quota has the strength to get fathers who would never have thought of taking leave by themselves to use parental leave (Brandth and Kvande, 2002, 2012). With the introduction of flexibility, leave policies support the idea of the ‘choice-making father’ who, in contrast to mothers, has greater freedom to express choices in the area of work and care (Vuori, 2009). While Norwegian leave policies strongly encourage paternal involvement in childcare, the actual practices are handed over to the father’s own choices. This section explores how flexible leave opens up the possibility of fathers avoiding childcare.

‘Really, when I was thinking about leave, I couldn’t envision staying at home for 10 weeks with the kids. It’s simply too much,’ Nicolai stated, and continued:

It’s very difficult, not really that much fun, to be frank. I don’t want to shock anybody; really, I’m just saying what it felt like. Caring for a baby is demanding; it’s really difficult, you know. You can’t turn your back, or go to the loo without the kid coming with you, more or less. Or if your turn your back, it’s holding a knife, it’s like … it’s so hard! I thought 10 weeks at home, that’ll be hard physically and mentally, and it’ll be boring too! When your kid is so young, there’s not that much you can do, I feel, but I thought that it was a very good idea to do it [by] working 80 per cent over one year.

One day of leave per week was the solution Nicolai envisioned. He felt that in this way the leave would benefit the entire family because there would be less stress on a day-to-day basis.

Another father had similar reflections about what it meant to be home alone with his first child, who was approaching one year of age:

Being home with a one-year-old, that’s … it’s really, yes, I’ll be quite honest; it was terribly hard! It was the dark winter, and it was exhausting. When the kids are so small, you really communicate in a different way than you normally do. So compared with now, now I’m starting to reach another, how to say it, a new communication level with him. He’s starting to talk, and we’re doing things together.

His previous experience was a strongly contributing motivation for deciding to take his father’s quota as part-time leave with their second child. For first-time parents, the demanding and externally unvalued work of nurturing and caring often comes as a shock (Miller, 2011). Many of the fathers seemed to be considering a postponement of the leave if they were to have another child. ‘I might want to have my leave when my child is a little bit older, really,’ Gustav stated. ‘For my part at least, when your child is a little bit older, there’s a little more, how to say it, response with it, like, so I feel this is more rewarding for my part, really.’ It is interesting to note that he treated the father’s quota as something that should also be rewarding for him; the child’s need for care was not his only concern.

Feeling that it was better to have parental leave with slightly older children was the main motive behind Dag’s choice to postpone his leave from his job as an executive adviser until his son was older. He had many negotiations with his wife, who would have preferred him to have longer periods of leave during the child’s first year, but Dag steadfastly maintained that he wanted to ‘take it in periods until he [their son] turned three.’ He believed that the relationship between father and son would benefit from having some common experiences they would both appreciate:

It means more for the future relationship between me and my son that I do something he is able to understand and remember and enjoy. I thought that enjoying things together should be something he finds exciting and fun, thus he should learn what an excavator is! Otherwise, if he’s too young, we can’t look at construction sites together. Because I knew for certain that we would be looking at construction sites. He has to be old enough first, then I’ll take out father’s leave, and then he’ll think this is great fun!

Dag and his son often took a drive to construction sites and he felt it had given him richer experiences with his son than if he had stayed home minding him.

I did that, I took some Fridays and walked him in his baby carriage while he was sleeping and burping and drinking milk from a bottle. I felt that this didn’t give me the same, because I could have done this on Saturday and Sunday, but now I feel that it’s much more rewarding to be with him because now he’s much more interested in being with his father; now it’s not just about feeding him.

For Dag, the father’s quota meant spending days off with his son and not ongoing day-to-day caring; this practice constructs a different type of dad. In general, he attached more importance to exposing his son to the world of work and especially to this manly work-focused activity. This case supports research reporting that men are more likely to participate in the more enjoyable aspects and leave the ongoing, primary care responsibility to mothers (Klinth and Johansson, 2010). Being able to choose the character of their involvement shapes these men’s fathering. Hence, the leave does not seem to represent any real change towards fathers taking greater responsibility for childcare. Flexible leave policies only partially dismantle the gendered division of care responsibility.

Discussion and conclusion

Research literature on flexible work arrangements is abundant, but few studies have focused on the effects of flexible parental leave. The aim of this article has been to increase insight into how flexibility as a design element of the earmarked father’s quota has affected fathering. Such knowledge may furnish a useful corrective to research (Bruning and Plantenga, 1999; Ray et al., 2010; Rostgaard, 2002) and policies (Prop. 64 L, 2011–2012) that have commended Nordic parental leave designs without considering the effects of flexibility.

A substantial body of research has presented flexible models of work as a solution to work-family conflicts, yet many studies have pointed to the gendered character of flexible working whereby mothers and not fathers balance paid work with childcare by means of flexible working hours (Craig and Powell, 2011). Fathers have been found to reject part-time work as a way of maintaining work-family balance and they seem to be wrestling with the inconsistency between the ‘new involved father’ and the ‘ideal worker’. In the context of parental leave, however, part-time leave is preferred more by fathers than by mothers.

Fathers preferring part-time leave to full-time leave may illustrate men’s devotion to work and reluctance to stay away from it even when they are on mandatory parental leave. Flexible use of the father’s quota appears to serve both work and childcare. After the period of leave was extended, the need to minimize absence from work may have become more important. At the descriptive level, then, this study confirms what is known from other research: flexible work arrangements are not a guaranteed way of increasing fathers’ involvement in childcare.

The father’s quota is an opportunity for fathers to draw a line against the demands of work and immerse themselves in the child. Although the flexibility of the leave is indispensable for fathers in some occupations, part-time leave is a double-edged sword because it damages the boundary drawing function described in the literature (Brandth and Kvande, 2003b) and makes room for individual choices that often end up with work subtly controlling the situation. The inability to set boundaries and shield time for childcare from time to work is a recurring issue among the fathers who have used flexible leave. Institutionalizing the opportunity to work during the leave discursively defines fathers as people who cannot be separated from work.

Some studies have suggested that parental leave for fathers increases their competence as parents (Brandth and Kvande, 2003a; Bungum, 2013; Wall, 2014). The analysis presented in this article indicates that flexibility as part-time leave may work against the aim of making men into more competent carers. It does not provide fathers with the continuous slow time needed in caring for a baby and hinders the establishment of autonomous care routines. Many fathers on flexible leave seem to experience double stress because they feel they are not living up to the expectations of either work or caring. Thus, this evidence does not confirm the assumption of policy makers that flexibility will make it simpler for fathers to combine work and care. Flexible use of the father’s quota also presupposes that mothers are available, ready to alternate with fathers or step in for them, making it dependent on mothers’ options for work and care either on a planned or an ad hoc basis. Most often the father’s flexible leave is combined with mothers’ (temporary) part-time employment, so it tends to confirm mothers as the primary carers and fathers as secondary.

Flexible leave gives options to fathers who are reluctant to take on child-minding. It supports the idea of the ‘choice-making father’ who has the privilege of making choices when it comes to work and care. Some fathers stretch out and postpone their leave until the child has reached an age when they can communicate through spoken language. Interestingly, one motive for taking leave when the child is a couple of years older is that fathers see it as more rewarding for themselves.

Statutory, earmarked leave for fathers that is forfeited if not used has proven to be effective when it comes to fulfilling the aims of more father care and more equal co-parenting (Brandth and Kvande, 2001, 2012; Duvander, 2013; Eydal and Gíslason, 2013). The findings in this article are limited by the small, relatively homogeneous sample when it comes to class and urban location. For this segment of employed fathers, however, the findings demonstrate that flexible use of the father’s quota may reduce the quota’s effect when it comes to development towards more involved fathering. A critical view of the consequences of flexible leave designs is largely absent from research and policy debates. Considering the objectives of the measure, this article emphasizes the importance of making explicit the gendered meanings of flexibility and being careful about adopting the enticing arguments of flexible arrangements to rationalize a practice that may have unintended effects. Flexible arrangements may be more significant on the symbolic level of shared parenting than on the level of actual fathering practice.