“I Feel Like It’s a Little Bit of a Badge of Honor”: Fathers’ Leave-Taking and the Development of Caring Masculinities

Literature Review

Given the opportunity, many fathers learn and perform childcare with great skill and sensitivity (Chesley 2011; Doucet 2006; Risman 1986). Yet research has shown that they do not necessarily put their masculinity “on the line” (Doucet 2006; Morgan 1992). The men in Doucet’s (2006, 196) study on primary care fathers, for instance, actively worked “to dispel the idea that they might be gay, un-masculine or not men” by emphasizing masculine qualities of their caregiving, such as promoting risk-taking and re-framing the home as a site of self-provisioning rather than a locus of care (see also Wilson and Prior 2010). Brandth and Kvande (1998) identified similar tendencies amongst Norwegian men on parental leave who emphasized the ways in which they were different than mothers, such as teaching the child independence and taking them out into the world. They also avoided housework (Almqvist 2008; Brandth and Kvande 1998). Just taking parental leave could be framed as a masculine act. Schmidt, Reider, Zartler, Schadler, and Richter (2015) found that in Austria a man’s ability to interrupt his career was viewed as courageous struggle against external constraints by both spouses. Almqvist (2008) thus cautions that a shift towards a “child-oriented masculinity” in which fathers enjoy close relationship with their children should not be confused with “gender-equal men.”

Although involved fathering can reinforce hegemonic masculinity, there is also evidence of men reworking their gender identities in ways that challenge conventional notions of manhood. Recent research (Johansson 2011; Solomon 2014; Wall 2014) reveals less attention to differentiating from women, and more integrating of the values and practices of care into masculine identities. In one study (Brandth and Kvande 2016), attentive caregiving was framed as a source of self-worth through skill acquisition, performance of the hard work of parenting, and being needed by the child. Because these accomplishments were also attributed to mothers, the authors suggest this may indicate an “undoing” of the gendered character of caring. Similarly, Doucet (2006), Lee and Lee (2018), and Solomon (2014) all report that taking responsibility for others profoundly changes men, who come to appreciate their ‘emotional sides’, value care work, and adopt perspectives traditionally espoused by women on the need for work–family balance.

Yet the significance of these developments in contemporary fathering remains undertheorized. A new wave of scholars suggests this is because the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1987; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), though highly influential to critical studies of men and masculinity, overlooks the nuances of men’s experiences (Hanlon 2012; Seidler 2006). That is, conceptualizing masculinities as locked into power relations with each other “precludes a comprehensive understanding of the lived realities of men’s emotional lives” (Elliott 2016, 246) and “how men can change through processes of transforming masculinities in specific cultures, histories and traditions” (Seidler 2006, 12). Thus Elliott (2016) argues for a practice-based model of “caring masculinities,” in which the connection between doing care work and changing identities is attended to. Brandth and Kvande (2016) take up this call, and find that Norwegian men who take leave alone come to measure self-worth not in terms of the acquisition of status and resources, but against building an intimate relationship with one’s child and contributing love and security to their lives. What’s missing from their analysis, however, is greater attention to the relationship between social context and subjectivity. The authors suggest that “comparative studies on the conditions for developing caring masculinities” (2016, 17) are thus necessary.

Some theorists suggest that simply structuring men’s transition to parenthood in ways more similar to mothers’ is enough to condition men’s greater involvement (Gornick and Myers 2008; Rehel 2014; Risman 1986), but a handful of rich empirical studies make it clear that the broader organization of parenting is an overlooked, yet key, aspect to how responsibility is experienced and perceived. Although “men can mother” (Risman 1998, 46) and maternal thinking is something that fathers can develop (Coltrane 1989; Ruddick 1995), mothering and fathering must be recognized as distinct social experiences and institutions (Chesley 2011; Doucet 2006, 224; Hanlon 2012; McMahon 1995). Though gendered cultural expectations tend to render different aspects of parenting risky for men and women (Shirani, Henwood, and Coltart 2012), research shows caregiving can provide “moral verification” for men under certain circumstances (Doucet 2006, 206). Brandth and Kvande (2003) argue, for instance, that men who take leave alone develop an awareness and appreciation of the importance of spending quality or “slow time” with children in order to get to know them and understand their needs. For men who share leave, on the other hand, it is mothers who read and translate the child’s needs for the father (75). It is in the context of a break with mother’s mediation that the father’s self-definition as a capable, independent, or primary caregiver emerges, putting previous gender roles in question, in particular the idea that the mother is the natural caregiver (Wall 2014, 207). These findings are supported by research on the emergence of a “caring consciousness” in post-divorce fathers no longer able to rely on a spouse to manage caregiving (Philip 2014). And Solomon (2014) finds that over time, engaging in family work can be a source of pride, rather than shame, for stay-at-home fathers who come to see their role as supporting their wives’ successful careers.

Given that there remains scant research into what fathers do as primary parents (Brandth and Kvande 2016; Wall 2014) and even less about how men make sense of their caregiving, studying parental leave is an especially rich site for adding to this body of literature. Bringing to light the different parenting practices and understandings that emerge when conventional resources and enactments of masculinity are suspended—but not severed—has wider applicability than concentrating on men who have completely given up their breadwinner identities. The current study thus considers whether and when men who spend limited time with baby take on or even embrace maternal roles or tasks, as well as when and how men’s leave-taking can disrupt inequality within families and beyond.

Data and Methods

As part of a larger project examining fathers’ leave-taking, I conducted interviews in 2014 with 33 Canadian couples in which men took at least six weeks of statutory parental leave under the Employment Insurance (EI) program. Provided they have worked a minimum of 600 hours in the year proceeding their claim, this plan entitles biological mothers to 15 weeks of paid leave, with a further 35 available to either parent, remunerated at 55 percent of previous salary (to a maximum yearly payout of $26,730 in 2014). Participants were recruited through postings on neighborhood groups on Facebook and online discussion (parenting-related and more general) forums with a high presence of southern Ontarians. In order to participate, fathers had to be cohabiting with their partners, willing to participate in a joint interview, and have taken EI parental leave for at least six weeks within the last three years. This was selected as the minimum time at home in order to narrow down the sample to fathers who were home beyond the initial stress and chaos of the post-birth period to when parenting styles and routines begin to develop.

The resulting sample consisted of 31 heterosexual married and two common-law couples living within an hour of Toronto. The majority of couples were firmly in the upper-middle class based on occupation, income, and education levels. Household incomes ranged from $50,000 to $260,000, with an average combined salary of $163,000. This includes two single-income families where the men were currently stay-at-home fathers. The rest of the couples in this study were dual earners, with women and men each being primary bread-winners in nine families, defined here as earning at least 60 percent more than their spouses (Tichenor 1999). Those with lower education levels were found almost exclusively amongst the lower earners. One father had only a high-school degree, three of the men and one of the women had attempted some post-secondary, and another three men and one woman had received their college diplomas. Nine of the men and 13 of the women had bachelor’s degrees, and 17 of the men and 18 of the women had graduate or professional-school degrees. The average age for men and women in this study was 36. Finally, seven participants were visible minorities and the remainder were Caucasian.

Table 1 displays the characteristics of fathers’ leaves. Twenty-three of the fathers took leave as solo caregivers, while 10 were on leave with their spouse. Leaves of between three to six months were by far the most common (n = 23) amongst participants, 19 of whom spent their time as solo caregivers. Men who took shorter or longer leaves than this were distinguished from the rest of the sample by either a disinterest from one or both spouses in sharing the time, or a wife who was ineligible for leave-taking, respectively.

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Table 1.

Fathers’ length of leave.

	Length of Leave
	Short < 3 months	Medium 3–6 months	Long > 6 months	Total
Sole Caregiver	2	19	2	23
With Spouse	3	4	3	10
Total	5	23	5	33

Couples participated in a joint interview lasting approximately two hours, usually in their homes. Interviews were semi-structured, based on a schedule of 50 to 60 open-ended questions about the decision to share leave, their time at home, and ideas about parenting. During this time, couples also completed an interactive survey in which they jointly assessed how a selection of physical tasks and mental responsibilities—capturing the less-visible work of planning, managing, and worrying (Doucet 2009, 2015; Walzer 1998)—were allocated between them before and after having children (see Doucet 2001). I refer to the sum total of this work required to meet baby’s needs as parenting throughout this article, and it was performed by mothers and fathers alike. Rather than simply tallying either spouse’s time commitment to housework or childcare, the interactive methods approximate the conditions of daily family life by providing a context for joint meaning-making between spouses. Follow-up interviews lasting 45 to 90 minutes were also conducted with the men three to four weeks later to elaborate on these topics, as well as anything else they may not have wanted to discuss with their spouse present. The data upon which this article is based draws from fathers’ personal accounts of their time on leave as well as the interactively constituted narratives of family life that emerged from the couple interviews.

All interviews were audiotaped with participants’ permission and later transcribed. Following recommendations in Kvale (1996), transcription did not include every pause or verbal mannerism, but was otherwise verbatim. Interviews were manually coded and analyzed following the principles of grounded theory and ‘theoretical saturation’ originally outlined by Glaser and Strauss (1967) in which researchers attend closely to what happens in the empirical world in order to develop theoretical analysis by employing a comparative, systematic, inductive method. Initial analysis involved immersing myself in the data and developing a series of open codes reflecting the themes that emerged repeatedly as I read through the transcripts line by line. Through constant comparison and interrogating the data with analytic questions (Charmaz 2012), these initial codes were methodically raised to the more focused categories of analysis discussed here. Although the themes I present align closely with Elliot’s (2016) conceptualization of “caring masculinities,” I became familiar with her work only after conducting my data collection and initial analysis. From the beginning, I was struck by how moved participants were by the experience of parental leave—practically, emotionally, and cognitively. In the latter stages, my analysis of this data gained theoretical purchase from Elliot (2016) and other theorists in critical studies of men and masculinity (Connel 2005; Hanlon 2012; Meuser 2004), although I employed a careful process of memo writing throughout to ensure that the arguments presented in this article are grounded in participants’ understandings and experiences.

Findings

All men in this study discussed how taking parental leave enabled them to learn the skills of childcare and connect emotionally with baby. Participants differed, however, when it came to their degree of engagement. Only fathers who regularly and independently managed routine, hands-on caregiving and the mental work this entailed—what I refer to as “deep” immersion in parenting throughout this paper—developed a sense of commitment to, and responsibility for, their child. The more changed fathers felt by the experience of caregiving, the more parenting was likely to be incorporated into their identities. Yet participants still had to engage with broader cultural forces: Even if enacting parental leave much like women, fathers recognized that they were given more leeway than mothers. The gendered context of parenting could, however, put men at risk for being off work. Feeling scrutinized depended on how participants negotiated with ideals of conventional masculinity. Both this cognitive, and the more practical, experience of fathers’ parental leave are discussed in detail below.

Conclusion

With little existing research on the actual experience of fathers’ parental leave (Brandth and Kvande 2016), it is important to understand men’s day-to-day caregiving reality and how this time with baby may be personally and socially transformative. Hearing from men about what it was like being at home with an infant reveals the significance of both the content and the context of their leave-taking to this process. First, although most fathers in this study discussed with detail and enthusiasm how taking parental leave enabled them to learn and enact the mental and physical work required to meet baby’s needs—what I have referred to as parenting through this article—only those who were “deeply immersed” in routine caregiving articulated a sense of ownership over their child’s care that could unsettle typically gendered family roles. In contrast, fathers who shared leave were able to rely on their wives to act as primary parent and were thus insulated from the weight of full responsibility, which was experienced by solo leave-takers as a lack of autonomy and unremitting “thinking about the baby” (Walzer 1998). This kind of attentive childcare, though, and perhaps because, incredibly demanding could be transformative for the men; for many, nurturing became a source of honor and pride. This explains the emphasis many participants placed on quantifying the amount of time required to produce this distinct change to their parenting, with estimates ranging from one to four months.

Like the work of Brandth and Kvande (2016), this study confirms the significance of being deeply immersed in parenting to the development of caring masculinities. Yet it also brings to light the ways in which fathers’ caregiving occurs and is experienced in a cultural context distinct from the more intensive one mothers confront. As a result, participants admittedly did not feel like mothers, even when they felt changed by the experience. This was not because the men were determined to “distinguish themselves as men, as heterosexual males and as fathers, not as mothers” (Doucet, 2006, 196, emphasis in original). For some it was because they believed mothers had a unique and essential connection to baby that as fathers they could never possess—an ideal that went unchallenged if the men never became self-sufficient parents. More commonly, however, it was because participants were held to gendered standards by their social contexts. That is, despite being fully engaged in routine parenting, as fathers they were exempted from cultural pressures to parent the “right way” that mothers face but celebrated just for spending time with baby. These findings support mothering and fathering as distinct social experiences and institutions (Chesley 2011; Doucet 2006, 224; Hanlon 2012; McMahon 1995). Yet I found low standards for men’s care may have also contributed to the ease with which many participants integrated caregiving into their self. It was only because a handful of fathers were uneasy about their time at home, however, that the majority’s confidence became recognizable as identity-building. Moved by the experience of parenting, participants fit caregiving into conventional masculinity (Lomas 2013), or broadened notions of manhood to integrate the values and practices of care (Elliott 2016), but only because their masculinity was never on the line (Morgan 1992). In contrast, those who were uncertain about meeting internalized cultural standards of manliness seemed unable to feel unreservedly good about their time spent caregiving. Nurturing was therefore something fathers could invest a new sense of self in only when the rewards of parenting were felt acutely and the risk to one’s sense of self was perceived as low. Thus, whereas Elliott (2016) suggests that the potential for men’s caregiving lies in the rejection of domination and non-conformance to expected masculine roles, this study finds that this is unlikely without a secure connection to hegemonic masculinity.

Although the institution of fatherhood may not have yet undergone a radical transformation, it is noteworthy that some men are negotiating the bumpy terrain of changing gender norms and practices. The relevance of class and significance of employment as a resource of masculinity, however, must be theorized. Without putting one’s career in jeopardy, taking parental leave enabled ‘accomplished’ fathers to experience deep immersion into daily caregiving. In doing so, many were moved to incorporate parenting into their self-concepts alongside their roles as earners. This was a privileged position to occupy; it suggests exposure to contemporary middle-class discourses of involved fathering and the resources, such as employer top-ups and eligibility for EI, to enact this ideal. Yet not all participants felt able to invest in caregiving. Parental leave only exacerbated feelings of insecurity for dads that were ‘ambivalent’ about their career success. Although there was no significant difference in relation to education, income, or occupation between these two groups, there was a sense amongst the ‘ambivalent’ dads that they were not fulfilling their masculine potential. As a result, these men seemed unable to ground their self-concepts in earning or caregiving. Yet other fathers, including some who worked in low income or status jobs or were not earning as stay-at-home parents, were ‘unfazed’ by their distance from masculine ideals. Having already accepted their “failure,” anchoring one’s identity in caregiving presented no risk to these men’s moral selves. Conceptions of, and attachments to, masculinity were clearly far from monolithic in this study. For the majority, however, middle-class resources provided the firm grip on masculinity needed to cross conventional gender boundaries (see also Doucet 2006; Thorne 1993).

The temporary nature of fathers’ time off work may limit the potential for more radical change because leave-taking does not necessarily disrupt hegemonic masculinity for the men who do it, nor change gendered divisions of work and care in the family in the long term. Nevertheless, if we accept that gender is an “ongoing emergent aspect of social interaction” (Deutsch 2007, 107; West and Zimmerman 1987), then fathers’ everyday struggles to balance work and family must be understood as a “constitutive part of a wider societal process, involving slow changes both in consciousness and in practice” (Ranson, 2012; Sullivan 2004, 219). This study set out to examine the transformative potential of hands-on caring in relation to the lived, affective lives of men who take parental leave, and confirms that the greater involvement, especially as solo caregivers, that fathers have in the early weeks and months of parenthood, the more likely they are to feel personally moved by the experience and ultimately incorporate the values and practices of care into their identities (Elliot 2016; Lomas 2013). When men come to be practiced in, and feel accountable for, their parenting they become, and see themselves, as equal and active caregivers, but only if they have the confidence to do so. As much as men are challenging conventional family arrangements by taking parental leave, the strong grip on manhood required for most to feel comfortable as nurturers makes it clear that parenting is very much a moral endeavor, embedded with gendered and classed expectations about men and women’s proper roles. Nevertheless, leave-taking is an important way that cultural configurations of acceptable masculinity can be reshaped. Whereas only a small group of fathers could embrace caregiving without feeling secure in their manhood, it represented an important liminal period in which men with stronger ties to conventional masculinity could ‘test the waters’ of hands-on caregiving and develop a more personal and less gendered stake in parenting—all without threatening their sense of self. Although these findings may represent a uniquely upper-middle class approach to father involvement given the sampling of this study, over time, it increases the social visibility of men as caregivers, contributes to loosening gender roles, and may ultimately mean nurturing becomes a less threatening endeavor for all men.