Christina Bergqvist

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THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURE. PARENTAL IDEALS AND DECISION-MAKING ABOUT CHILD CARING IN

TWO SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WELFARE STATES

Christina Bergqvist

[email protected]

Uppsala University

Department of Government

Sweden

and

Steven Saxonberg

[email protected]

Masaryk University, Brno, Dept of Social Policy and Social Work

Paper to be presented at the ECPG in Barcelona, March 21-23, 2013

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INTRODUCTION

Mikael Karlsson owns a snowmobile, two hunting dogs and five guns. In his spare time, this soldier-turned-game

warden shoots moose and trades potty-training tips with other fathers. Cradling 2-month-old Siri in his arms, he

can’t imagine not taking baby leave. “Everyone does” (New York Times June 9, 2010).

Men with prams have become such a familiar sight since shared parental leave was first introduced in 1974 (a

full 41 years before parents are scheduled to get it in the UK under the government’s proposals) that there’s

even a name – “latte pappas” – for the tribe (theguardian on facebook Sunday 18 November 2012).

Visitors in Scandinavia are often fascinated by site of many fathers with kids in strollers,

groups of fathers and kids playing in the park or the “latte pappas” in the cafés. In recent

decades, the Nordic countries have introduced policies aiming at promoting gender equality.

Mothers are still carers, but also breadwinners and fathers are breadwinners, but also carers.

Public policies such as insurance-based parental leave, “daddy quotas” and publicly funded

childcare services have explicitly been formulated to increase gender equality. This article

analyzes how culture and institutions (social policies) interact in the decisions parents make

about who should care for their children and how to organize work and family life. We

interpret our findings in the light of theories about post-modern values and individualization

processes showing that traditional social structures of class, gender, religion and family are

changing and even withering away (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2001; Inglehart & Norris 2003).

These theories predict that gender equality and the relationship between fathers and their

children become more important in the post-industrial world (Giddens 1998; Ahlberg, Roman

& Duncan 2008).

We base our findings on a unique interview study with mothers and fathers in Norway

and Sweden about their caring choices. These choices are very important for gender equality.

How do parents understand and use the universal family policy measures in these two social

democratic welfare states, which since the 1970/80s have institutionalized an individual

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earner/carer model? To be sure, when introducing this term, Sainsbury (1999) only places

Sweden under this category, because she claims that in Norway less women were in the labor

market and the public provision for childcare was much lower than the other Nordic countries.

Ellingsaeter (2006, 121) notes that Norway has been somewhat of a “family policy ‘hybrid,’

combining dual-earner support with traditional breadwinner elements.” She further states that

“gender traditionalism” has prevailed longer in Norway than in Sweden. However, today the

percentage of employed women is actually a little higher in Norway than in Sweden (see

Table 1). Moreover, as Table 2 shows, the percentage of children below the age of two

attending daycare is now actually higher in Norway than in Sweden. In both countries the

percentage of children attending daycare is extremely high by international standards. In

addition, in 1993 Norway became the first country to introduce a “daddy month,” with

Sweden shortly following after in 1995 (Bergqvist 1999; Bergman & Hobson 2001). Since

2011 Norway has had three months of parental leave reserved for the father, compared to two

for Sweden, so today it is reasonable to claim that Norway’s family policies are very similar

to Sweden’s, and that both countries have an individual earner-carer model in which both

parents are expected to work and take care of their family members. As Diagram 1 shows, the

percentage of parental leave that fathers take is higher in Sweden than in Norway, but even

among Scandinavian countries, these countries are still close together.

TABLES 1, 2, and DIAGRAM 1 ABOUT HERE

However, there are still many differences between women and men, not least when it comes

to parental leave and time spent on paid and unpaid work. (Ahrne & Roman 1997; Björnberg

2002; Sundström & Duvander 2002; Ellingsaeter & Leira 2006). Mothers and fathers do

behave differently and make different choices despite gender-neutral policies. Yet; today the

differences between Norway and Sweden are minimal. These countries, thus present, two

cases of similar institutions but with somewhat different cultural heritage.

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THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONS

Conservative authors have at times made essentialist arguments claiming that only women are

willing and capable of taking care of children (Hakim 2000). Even some feminists display

essentialist views and doubt that fathers can ever be induced to share in the parental leaves.

Thus, Bergman (2008), for example, claims that the introduction of paid parenthood leaves in

the USA would contradict the aim of gender equality, because it would create social pressure

for mothers to go on leave and stay out for the full time provided. Any woman who did not

utilize the full leave period would be branded a “bad mother.”

Even though the majority of scholars reject essentialist views and think that policies can

indeed induce fathers to share in the leave time (i.e. Hobson 2002), they are still divided over

the influence of institutions and culture over caring decisions. So far, institutional approaches

have dominated the debate about the influence of family policies on caring decisions (i.e.

Gornick and Meyers, 2008, Lewis 1993, Orloff 1996, Sainsbury 1996). However, a growing

number of scholars have pointed out that policies are mediated through cultural values. Pfau-

Effinger (2005) accordingly concludes that in European societies, different development paths

of policies towards family and gender exist, and we can mainly explain these differences by

variations in the dominant cultural family models between these societies. Duncan (2003,

2005) claims that different groups of people even living in the same country, often have

different “gendered moral rationalities,” which influence their caring decisions regardless of

family policies. For example, even if childcare is free and of high quality, some mothers will

still decide to stay at home with their children, because sending their children to daycare

violates their moral views as to the role of a “proper” mother. Haas (2000) also finds that

organizational culture plays an important role in influencing the decisions of fathers

concerning parental leave time. Culture also matters in the sense that employers have different

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expectations for men than for women (Crompton 2001; Crompton & Birkelund 2000). As

Bekkengen (2002) finds in her study of Swedish parents, both men and women face the same

problems in going on leave in those cases in which it can cause great problems for the

employer, but only men are allowed to solve this problem by deciding not to go on parental

leave.

In explaining the development of cultural values, two especially interesting claims have

arisen. One is the claim that Western societies are moving from being industrial societies,

based on heavy industry, in which modern values dominate, to post-industrial societies, based

on knowledge and services, in which post-modern values dominate (i.e. Inglehart 1997,

Inglehart & Norris 2003). People with post-modern values are less materialist in their

orientation, more tolerant and more interested in increasing their personal autonomy. They are

more in favor of gender equality, environmental protection and other quality of life issues.

Norway and Sweden always score very high on scales of post-modern values, so according to

the post-modern hypothesis, we would expect parents in these countries to be less materialist,

more in favor of gender equality, and more willing to compromise between career ambitions

and quality of life issues. Other social scientists have added that along with these changes a

process of individualization has been taking place, in which preferences for career and caring

choices have become more pluralized (Giddens 1991, Beck & Beck 1992, 2001).

Since our questions were limited to childcare, we cannot deeply access to what extent the

parents, whom we interviewed, truly have postmodern-individualized views toward life in

general. However, if the theories of postmodernism and individualization are correct, then we

would expect to see a fair amount of support for gender equality and parental sharing. We also

expect to see variation both in the actual choices that parents make and their view toward

ideal solutions to childcaring. Individualized parents, who are not only concerned with

materialist values are more likely to want to have their children stay at home for longer

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periods than the parental leave period, because being with one’s children also has a value, but

they are more likely to also think that rather than having one “correct” age for children to

attend daycare, the best time for starting also depends on the individual child, since we all

have different personalities and different rates of maturing. Not only can we expect variety in

beliefs as to when the children should begin attending daycare, we should also expect some

variation in beliefs in how parents should share the leave time. To some extent, parents who

think that their children should stay at home for a longer period than the 13 months of

insurance-based paid leave in Sweden or 12 months in Norway, might seem merely to be

traditionalists, who want mothers to return to the kitchen. This would be true if the parents

think that only mothers should stay at home and if mothers should stay at home for the entire

pre-school period. However, we did not find any such cases. Instead, all the parents thought in

theory that fathers should share in the leave time and the vast majority of parents still thought

the children should begin attending daycare at the age of two at the latest.

Despite our focus on the actual choices that parents make and the choices that they would

ideally want to make, we should stress that the “choices” that parents make are influenced by

the institutional context, economic restrictions and dominant cultural beliefs, not least about

gender. As Ellingsaeter and Leira (2006, 5) point out parents have an active role “in

generating change in parenthood practices and policies … Mothers’ and fathers’ practices are

generated in the interplay of policies, economic structures, cultural norms and historic

trajectories”. If only cultural factors are important, then we would expect Norwegians to be

more conservative in their caring decisions than Swedes, despite the general trend toward

postmodern values and individualization in both countries. Previous studies conclude that

Swedes are more supportive of gender equality than Norwegians (Bernhardt et al., 2008;

Ellingsaeter 1998; Knudsen and Waerness, 2001). Moreover, Bernhardt et al found that

Swedish couples are more in favor of sharing housework, and also actually share it to a

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greater extent than Norway. Jakobsson and Kotsadam (2010) find in a more recent study, that

the difference between the countries might have decreased in some respects, but interestingly

the Norwegians are more positive towards governmental interventions to increase gender

equality.

As we will discuss below, we only found minor differences between Norwegians and

Swedes both in their beliefs about how caring should be arranged and in their actual choices.

This does not mean that our study rejects culturalist approaches, as we have strong evidence

for the individualization/post-modern hypotheses.

If policies matter, then we would not expect to find great differences in the choices that

parents actually make since parents in both countries face very similar situations concerning

the types of leave benefits and access to daycare. We also asked vignette questions about what

they would have done if policies had been different. Although we did not find big differences

between the countries, their replies to the vignettes do indicate that policies matter, because

even if attitudes are becoming increasing postmodern and individualized, actual decisions are

still somewhat based on the types of options available to parents. At the one extreme, if paid

parental leave benefits were to completely disappear the vast majority of parents claimed they

would have stayed at home for a shorter period and that the father would not have stayed at

home at all. At the other extreme, the vast majority of parents claimed that if parental leave

benefits were extended to two full years, then they would have kept their children home for

this period and the father would have shared much more equally in the leave time. This goes

against the hypothesis that relatively long parental leaves hurt women, as women take the vast

majority of the leave time. The interviews indicate that it has become a norm for mothers to

stay at home for at least 9 months to breast-feed their children, so parents are more willing to

have fathers go on leave after the mother stops breast-feeding, which means that leaves of 18-

24 months make it easier for parents to share their leaves equally given their norm about the

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“proper” length of breast-feeding. Of course, we should be a bit cautious because it is easier

for fathers to say they would go on a longer leave in a hypothetical situation than to actually

do so.

THE STUDY AND METHODOLOGY

We have conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with mothers and fathers in Oslo (20) and

Stockholm (40). We chose the capital cities, because these are the places where we can expect

that it will be most likely to find families in which fathers take rather long leave times, as

larger cities tend to be more open and tolerant, less conservative and have more post-modern

values than small towns. At the time of the interviews the children were in their first year of

school, making them six or seven years old. We recruited the parents through the school of

their children. The interviews lasted for about 50 – 90 minutes, were recorded and later

transcribed. The idea was to interview individual parents, who recently had to make concrete

choices about by whom and how the child should be cared for until school starts. Most studies

have either asked only the mothers’ or both individuals in the couple. Often an implicit

assumption is made that only women have to make these kinds of decisions. We wanted to

include both mothers and fathers and not focus on the couple. Most of our interviewees were

living together with a partner and thus they of course often referred to discussions and

negotiations among themselves. However, we were interested in asking mothers’ as well as

fathers’ the same questions to explore gender patterns. The questions asked are designed to

get an understanding about what they consider when they decide about who and how their

child should be cared for before starting school.

To get a picture of how values and institutions interact in the decisions made at micro-

level by individuals we asked them about their values and ideals about care and parental

leave, how long a child should be at home with the mother/father or another person, when to

start daycare/preschool or any other non-parental care. We also asked about how many hours

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a day a child should be in daycare and what they thought about the ideal working-time for

themselves and their partner. Then we asked them about how they actually organized the

parental leave, daycare, work etc. As already noted, we also asked them vignette questions

about what they would have done if policies had been different, which helps us ascertain what

influence changes in policies might have, even though, of course, we must keep in mind that

just because they say they would do something in an imaginary situation, it does not

necessarily mean that would do it in reality.

The article proceeds by analyzing the interviews to show the importance of a) post-

modern values and individualization by discussing the choices that parents make and their

ideals first for the length of the total parental leave and then b) the manner in which the leave

time should be shared. Then we discuss the role that c) biological essentialism still plays

despite the predominance of post-modern/individualized values; and finally by analyzing the

answers to the vignette questions, we discuss d) the importance of policies.

HOW LONG SHOULD THE CHILDREN STAY AT HOME?

Theorists of post-modern values postulate that as people in post-industrial societies

become more highly educated, their values become less materialist and they begin to place

greater value on quality of life issues, such as personal autonomy. When it comes to ideals

about caring decisions, Norwegians and Swedes display post-modern values in that they are

more likely to think that they should make economic sacrifices in order to stay at home with

their children for a longer period than the paid leave period. Our study shows that many

parents reject the notion that parents should immediately send their children to daycare once

the fully-paid leave period ends. Most parents ideally wanted their children to start childcare

outside the home when they were between 15 and 24 months old. Here we find a difference

between the two countries were the Stockholm parents prefer somewhat later daycare start

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than Oslo parents. Only 6 out of 40 parents in Stockholm said that children ideally should

start before 18 months while half of the parents in Oslo preferred that. Probably this has to do

with the differences in the institutional construction of the parental leave system that we

discuss more below.

In practice a minority of the parents were able to choose according to their stated ideal.

Altogether 20 of our 60 parents had sent their child to a childcare centre after the age of 18

months, but before three years of age and in two cases the child had turned three years old. In

most cases, (38/60) the child started daycare before he/she turned 18 months, thus before the

ideal age of most parents. As a mother from Oslo, working as nurse says: “I would have liked

to be at home one more year… I think it is too early to start when they are one … from two

years I would have liked her to start daycare” (FOWC3).

They are also likely to think that their children should attend daycare only 6 hours per

day until the age of two or later. Furthermore, virtually everyone, whom we interviewed, held

this view – regardless of their educational level or type of work. These findings about ideals

and practice are similar to results in larger quantitative studies (e.g. Duvander 2006). It is

interesting to note that not one parent argued for the traditional view that only mothers should

take care of children and that children should stay with their mother until they begin school.

The vast majority of parents in both countries were very satisfied with the quality of daycare

that their children received and they thought that daycare was very good for their children,

which also goes against traditionalist views.

The view that children should be home with one of the parents for a rather long time was

shared by parents both with lower and higher educational levels. However, the reasons for

their ideals and their possibilities to fulfill them varied between working-class families and

middle-class families. Women with the lowest levels of education wished to stay at home for

longer periods because they tended to be the least career oriented. They often expressed that it

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was more fulfilling to take care of their children then to work. For example an immigrant

woman working part-time in a store held the view that daycare is a good option when the

child is around 2,5 to three years old. She had herself really liked to take care of her child

herself (FSWC6). Another example is a mother, who works as a garbage collector (FSWC5)

who would have liked to stay at home until her children began school, but could not afford to

do so. At the same time they also think daycare is good and important for their children’s

development. Some of the parents with lower education working in more typical working-

class or lower status profession would thus have liked to be home more, but could not afford

to. The mothers in this group were often in part-time work and with a more unsecure relation

to the labour market than middle-class mothers (e.g. FSWC10). The fathers on the other hand

worked a lot, often irregular working hours. In this group we thus saw more of traditional

gender roles with mothers taking most of the leave, adapting her work and work-time to be

able to take a large part of the day to day tasks around the child. The fathers in this group

often brought up economic reasons for why they did not participate more than they did.

Among parents with higher levels of education, many wanted to stay at home with their

children for relatively long periods, because they place higher values on spending time with

their children. In addition, this group tends to be the wealthiest, so they could also afford to

stay at home for the longest periods. However, in contrast to those with the lowest

educational levels, parents in this group were much more likely to share the parental leave

time more equally as fathers often also believed it was important to spend time with their

children. Thus, even though the group of higher educated people both stayed at home for

relatively long periods and also wished to be able to do so, the amount of time that the

mothers spent at home was not necessarily longer, as fathers took longer leaves.

Most parents reasoned in terms of what is best for the child rather than materialist-

career terms both when it comes to the ideal age for sending their child to daycare and the

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ideal amount of hours that the child should stay there per day. Thus, while they often think

that at 12 or 13 months the child is too young to begin daycare, they also think that the child

would suffer if he/she stayed at home for too long a period. In their view children need

daycare in order to acquire social skills. A typical response from a middle-class father is:

… we would have been able to afford to stay at home longer with A, but we

would not have wanted to either for our sake or for A’s. This is because these

days all children go to daycare. … [So daycare is important] so they will

experience being in a community (MSMC7)

Another example of how the parents value day care is an immigrant father running a taxi

company, who pointed out that if his daughter had been at home too long she would not

learn Swedish and be prepared for school (MSMC8)

Even though most parents wanted their children to begin daycare later than 12-13

months, some parents were very happy about the possibility they had had to let their child

start daycare at the age of 12 – 14 months. Yet, even some remarked that they were aware

that it was a bit earlier than what today is considered the norm and they were aware that it is

becoming increasingly common to send one’s children at a later date to daycare. One

woman (FSMC2) who had chosen to have her child without a present partner said: “it is a

little provocative perhaps … to say that one thinks the parental leave insurance is generous

and that one was very happy to stay at home for 13 months and now wants to go back to

work.” She adds that views are changing and that in the 1980s people were more used to

sending their children to daycare at the age of 12 months and back then the public sector

even provided a home-helper to take care of the children when they became sick, so that the

parents could continue working. In terms of post-modern values, this change is not

surprising as Swedes and Norwegians today are much more highly educated than in the

1980s and the economy has become much more dependent on post-industrial sectors based

on knowledge or service. We should note that although as the individualization hypothesis

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would predict, we noticed a great deal of variation both in the actual decisions that parents

made and in their beliefs in the best ideal solution as no two parents fell into an accepted

pattern and chose the exact same solution, they nevertheless basically showed these

differences within the bounds of the existing policies. In other words, virtually everyone

accepted the basic premises of Norwegian and Swedish family policy, based on the notion

that fathers should share in the parental leave time and that children should attend daycare at

an age that is much lower than the continental European tradition of waiting until the

children are old enough to begin kindergarten (i.e. at least three years old).

HOW SHOULD PARENTAL LEAVES BE SHARED?

The vast majority of parents hold the ideal that the father should use half or a substantial

amount (at least the quota) of the leave time. However, in line with the individualization

hypothesis, their views differed, as we saw above, as to how long the parents should optimally

stay at home with the child and they also usually added that the optimal period is also

individual and depends on how each child develops. The Norwegian and Swedish parental

leave schemes allow for a great deal of flexibility and variation, as parents can share the leave

time anyway they see fit and they can stretch out the leaves anyway they please, so that for

example, they can decide to take out 50% of the leave time per day and receive the benefits

for twice as long (i.e. 24 months in Norway or 26 months in Sweden). An important

restriction is that a certain number of days are reserved for only one parent. At the time when

the child of the interviewee was cared for by any of the parents at home Norway had one

month reserved for each parent and Sweden had two months per parent, although Norway has

since then increased the number of months reserved for each parent to three months.

Interestingly, even though virtually everyone accepted the idea of gender equality, when they

discussed measures such as fathers sharing in the leave time or children attending daycare

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(which makes it easier for mothers to return to work), they usually reasoned in terms of what

is best for the child rather than in terms of gender equality. Nevertheless, not one respondent

found a contradiction between arguments for gender equality and for arguments for what is

best for the children. In contrast to the conservative criticisms that are common in other

countries that gender equality comes at the expense of the child, our respondents basically

found gender equality and the child’s best to be mutually reinforcing.

Another interesting finding is that some parents – especially fathers – claimed that they

did not believe they had different gender roles in their family although the fathers had not

shared the parental leave time even close to equally with the mother, because they believed

that they shared the child-raising tasks equally after the child began attending daycare. Thus,

they did not see parental leaves as an important aspect of gender equality. Even so most

parents thought that fathers should share in the leave time and a large minority thought that

fathers should share rather evenly. However, they differed greatly in their actual choices.

Despite the great amount of variation that we saw among parents, we can still basically divide

them into two groups: 1) Those where the mother took all the leave time or when the father

used his quota time, he only did so a few days at a time rather than in one longer period (24

parents); 2) those where the father only used the quota time, but did so in one continuous

period or those where the father took more than the quota period (36 parents).

ONLY THE MOTHER TOOK THE LEAVE FOR MORE THAN WEEKS AT A TIME

In the first group the fathers did not use their right to a “daddy month” to stay at home with

the child for one consecutive period and instead took a day now and then or for example in

relation to vacation and sometimes when the mother was at home too. Almost half of the

Swedish parents belonged to this group (19/40), while a fourth (5/20) of the Norwegian group

belonged here. However, none of these parents claimed that they were against fathers sharing

in the leave. Instead their reasons often had to do with what they believed to be their specific

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circumstances such as being a lonely mother (i.e. FSMC2), the father not having worked

enough to be eligible for parental leave benefits (except for the low flat-rate alternative), or

they claimed that the father’s job made it difficult for him to go on leave (but of course a

mother with a similar position would not be able so easily to make such an excuse). Some, but

surprisingly few mentioned economic reasons.

One Stockholm mother with two children who said she ideally thought parents should

stay at home a year each explains that she stayed at home for a year and then started to study.

As a student she was quite flexible and her husband stayed at home a-day-or-two a week for a

while and just before and after vacations before the daughter started attending childcare when

she was around 15 months. She adds that her husband is a teacher, so he has rather long and

many vacations (FSWC3).

A father in Stockholm provides an example of a case in which he claims that his

particular type of job as a salesman made it difficult to go on leave for long periods:

She [his wife] was home for 16 months. During these 16 months I took 30 days

of leave spread throughout ... Actually, it was not so strange, because it was

difficult for me to go on leave for long periods” (MSWC1).

Interestingly, it was more common for Swedish fathers to spread their leave over a long

period than for Norwegian fathers. An important reason is the institutional effect of Sweden

having a more flexible parental leave system that allows parents to use parental leave days

(including the days earmarked for either parent) until the child is 8 years old. Most parents in

both countries prefer long parental leaves of around two years and this is easier in the

Swedish system. In Norway the parents have to use the days before the child turns three.

Thus, we see that institutions do matter as well as cultural beliefs.

The lack of eligibility for parental leave benefits was also a reason given for the father

not sharing in the leave time. A father in Oslo said he could not go on father leave because

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when his child was little his family lived in Africa because of his work and his wife was

unable to work there (MOMC2). Similarly, a Stockholm mother and her husband were

without income-related parental leave because they had lived abroad. She stayed at home for

half a year and then worked part-time because she could not afford to stay at home longer and

she wanted to make a good impression at her employer. She hired a childminder to help out

before the child stared attending daycare. She comments that it is very unusual in Sweden to

start working when the child is only six months. Her husband did not want to stay at home at

all with the child both for economic reasons and because of a lack of interest (FSWC1). These

cases illustrates that parents outside the institutional framework rely on solutions that are quite

gender conservative.

Previous research leads us to expect that it would be much more common for working-

class parents to belong to this group, where only mothers went on leave. However, we did not

see such a pattern; the group is rather diverse when it comes to social background. Many of

the respondents describe the way they decided about how to do as something that just

happened or seemed natural at the time. A working class mother who thinks it is important for

the child to stay at home with one or both the parents for as long as possible did not succeed

in persuading her partner to share any leave: “I wanted him [the father] to experience being

alone with the child for some period... His relationship to the child would be closer ... but he

did not get to know him at all because he had been working all the time since he was little.”

Interestingly, this mother who really liked to be at home with her child also was nevertheless

very enthusiastic about child care centers and had used it part-time for her child (FSWC5).

In contrast to previous studies that have emphasized work culture and pressure from

work as an important factor (Hobson, Fahlén and Takács 2012), only a few people mentioned

pressure from colleges or their bosses. On the contrary a substantial number of interviewees –

especially in Oslo – highlight the employer as a facilitator, who encourages the fathers to go

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on leave. Nevertheless, several fathers admit to indirect pressure as this man working in a

bank: “yes, it is a little sensitive sometimes, if one says that now I wanted to go on leave one

day a week or something … they. ... [The bosses] will never say, they cannot refuse my

request to go on leave, but one can still read behind the lines that they think it is a bit

difficult” (MSWC10). Another father working in a leadership position admits that he was

surprised when one in the leadership group of his enterprise dared to openly say that it is not

possible to combine parental leave with this type of position, but “it is still true that one does

not expect men to go on leave with their children in the same way [that one expects it for

women]” (MSMC6).

THE FATHER USED THE QUOTA PERIOD IN A ROW OR MORE THAN THE QOUTA

There are some differences between the parents in Norway and the parents in Sweden. Almost

all Osloparents in this group followed a pattern were the mother took most of the parental

leave during the first 10 – 11 months and then the father took the “daddy quota” and the child

started childcare at the age of 12 to 15 months. In Stockholm fathers who shared parental

leave (not only taking occasionally days) usually took more time off than the “daddy quota.”

This might be related to some differences between the Norwegian and Swedish parents in

their norms about how long fathers should stay at home and when the children should start

childcare. Swedish parents to a somewhat higher degree stress that mothers and fathers should

have the same responsibilities and that when they talk about sharing parental leave they mean

that each parent should stay at home for several months. The Oslo parents often equate

“sharing” with the father’s quota of two months. A cultural interpretation would be that

Norwegians have a more traditional view of gender roles, but the institutional interpretation is

that they see the father’s quota as a signal about what is the “right thing” to do. This can be

illustrated with a mother from Oslo, who very explicitly referred to the institutional

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framework when she described the reasons for how they shared parental leave and pointed out

that the father only took the part that was “obligatory” (FOWC4).

However, in general our interviews indicate that parents do not blindly follow the exact

institutional rules, but rather institutions constantly interact with (changing) cultural values

and the “mainstream” norms are based on this interaction. So as already noted, although the

parental leaves are only fully paid for 12 months in Norway and 13 months in Sweden, it still

have become a norm for parents to send their children at a later age to daycare. A typical case

comes from a father, who stayed home for four-five months (over twice the minimum quota),

but much shorter than the mother, who was home with the child for over a year. He reflects

it is easy to follow some sort of mainstream and do like all the other do. Most

send their children to daycare when they are 18-24 months old; most use a

public municipal preschool, which one has already looked at and where one has

already met the personnel. Most go on father leave for a short time – it is almost

obvious. So I think that ... it is easy to do approximately like everyone else, so it

will be reasonably good, reasonably right (MSMC9).

Given the fact that both the Norwegian and Swedish governments openly promote the notion

that fathers should share the parental leave time equally, and given the fact that almost all the

parents, whom we interviewed support gender equality in theory, it is surprising that so few

fathers stayed at home longer than the quota period. As already noted, highly educated fathers

are in general more likely to stay at home longer than the quota period. However, we also find

cases of fathers without high educations staying home for longer periods, but they still usually

have households with relatively high incomes or are in a relationship with a mother with

higher education (e.g. FOMC1, FOWC7, FSMC8, FSMC10, FSWC9). When fathers stayed at

home more than the quota period, they often used gender equality as a reason, but they also

usually mentioned the child’s best. A father working as consultant with three children who

had shared parental leave equally with his wife said “we try to see to it, so it will be as equal

19

and just as possible. I do not see any clear difference between the sexes and think that it is

good to have daycare” (MSMC7). Similarly, a mother and journalist stated: “I do not think

there is any real difference between the mother’s or father’s tasks. ...My ideal is that both

parents have the same responsibility” (FSWC4).

In the cases in which fathers stayed at home for longer periods than the quota period, the

decisions were always deliberate. In contrast to some of the cases above, the decisions about

who should stay at home and for how long is not just something that happen without

planning. The fathers and/or the mothers have to be committed to the value of fathers sharing

and decisive about implementing it. A father working as a pre-schoolteacher says: ”She was at

home for eight months, then I demanded to be at home” (MSWC4),

In contrast to the cases in which fathers used workplace pressure to avoid going on

leave, in some cases going on leave actually became an asset. One accountant, who was on

father leave for 8 months and then worked part-time for a few more months commented: “We

shared fifty-fifty… I only received positive reactions from my clients; to some extent I even

developed better relations with my clients and even with my boss because of this” (MSWC2).

The mothers’ work commitment was also important. A mother who shared parental

leave with her partner is very satisfied with how she has been able to combine work and

family. Both she and her husband have rather low education, but have their own business.

They stayed at home around nine months each and then the child started daycare. “I wanted to

get back to work… and the father wanted to stay at home” (FSMC9).

In a few cases the father took most of the leave (FSWC4, FOMC2). A Oslo mother

working as skin therapist in her own business remarks that her husband stayed at home for the

majority of the leave period. She took around 40 weeks and then the husband used the rest of

the parental leave time and the cash benefit until the child started day care at the age of three.

This is the only case in our study where parents used the flat-rate cash-for-care benefits after

20

the initial parental leave. The reasons for their choice was that they did not get a place in

daycare and she had her career and earned more than her husband so it was the most practical

solution. The mother’s attitude in general seems to be decisive, as even in the cases in which

fathers stayed at home longer than the quota period they did not always stay at home as long

as they would have liked to because of the mother’s opposition. In one case the father, a

physician, stayed at home for three months and laughed that he could not stay at home longer,

because the “mother decided” (MSMC10, 39).

BIOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM

Even though almost all of parents supported a dual earner/carer model, many still used a more

gender-essentialist rationale. The most obvious aspect is that it has become a norm now for

mothers to breast-feed for 9-12 months; thus, most parents reason that the mother should stay

at home with the child for this period. Consequently, in contrast to the common argument that

long parental leaves hurt women, the vast majority of families claimed they would have

shared the leave-time much more equally if the leave had been two years, since they thought

the mother should stay at home during the first period. This type of essentializing is not so

surprising as the norms of breast-feeding are already well-known; however, some parents

went much farther in their essentializing and stressed that women’s and men’s roles should be

different due to biological differences. At the same time as they say that it is an ideal to share

the leave, they think that the bonds with the baby come more natural for women. In some

cases, they reason that fathers have to be taught about their responsibilities because they do

not have the natural bond that comes from being pregnant and then breastfeeding. One

mother, a teacher, sums up this view: when the child is born, the father “works a lot and the

mother of course stays at home. It is very important that he is there. It is very important for

21

creating the kind of contact that the mother already has. ... [The mother] carries the baby and

breastfeeds the child, so she establishes a natural contact with the baby” (FSMC10).

Essentialist views do not necessary lead to the conclusion that only mothers should take

care of the children. One father working as consultant think that female and male values are

different and, therefore, complementary. However, he does not conclude that women should

stay at home and men work, but rather that children need both “worlds” (the female and the

male) at home and at the childcare center were he would like to see more male pre-school

teachers:

the mother role and father role should not differ very much. What does differ is that there

are female values and male values. ... They are different. ... This is genetically

determined and has its roots long ago in the hunter-collector society (MSMC7).

These interviews contradict the findings of Hobson, Fahlén and Takás (2012, 180) who did

not find an “essentialized view of motherhood,” when fathers in Stockholm explained their

reasons for not taking parental leave. In our study, nonetheless, these essentialist ideas did not

arise when asking why fathers did not take parental leave. Instead, they arose when asking

parents about their ideals about parental roles. On the surface there are small differences

between different groups of parents in how they express their ideals. Most Norwegians and

Swedes despite if they are women or men, working class or middleclass, immigrants or not

express values that fit the dual earner/carer model, but this does not mean that they have the

same ideas about gender equality.

THE INFLUENCE OF POLICIES: HOW THEY WOULD BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY

IF POLICIES CHANGED

22

Our interviews indicate that even though the basic idea of the parental leaves has

become widely accepted as a cultural norm, changes in the leave scheme would also influence

behavior. At one extreme, if the government would remove paid parental leaves benefits,

most would stay at home for shorter periods and some interviewees claim they might have

decided not to have children at all (i.e. FSMC2, MSMC7). At the other extreme, if the

insurance-based parental leave benefit were to increase to two years and paid 100%, most

interviewees claimed that the fathers would have shared more equally in the leave time. This

contrasts the claim that long leaves are detrimental to women (i.e. Eydal,& Rostgaard, 2011;

Hobson, Fahlén, and Takács. 2011; Lambert, 2008). If the leaves are generously paid, then

fathers are likely to share more equally if they are longer given the norm that mothers should

stay at home for 10-12 months to breast-feed. This is even true for those fathers who stayed at

home for relatively long periods. One father stayed at home for about 7 months, but still it

was clear for him that his former wife would stay at home for the first year. When asked what

would have happened if they had two years of paid parental leave, he replied that they would

have shared it equally at one year per parent (MSMC5). Another father, who only stayed at

home a few days at a time until he reached his two-month quota reasons that it is important

for the mother to be at home when the children are small “and they are more dependent on

their mother, ... but at the same time, if we had a longer parental leave of say two years or so,

then it would have been completely OK to share equally. But I think that the mother perhaps

would have been home for the first year” (MSWC10).

Of course, the Iceland case shows that the leaves can be shared more equally even with

much shorter leaves if one has strict quotas. While our interviews show a great deal of support

for the Icelandic quota system of 1/3 for each parent, they do NOT show support for having

shorter parental leaves; on the contrary, a large majority think that at12-13 months children

23

are too little to attend daycare and that parents should stay at home at least 15 months and

usually at least 18 months totally.

CONCLUSIONS

Our interviews indicate that Norwegian and Swedish parents basically support the idea of the

dual-earner/dual-carer model in theory, even though they are still surprisingly far from

sharing the caring duties equally in practice. Our interviews also support the individualization

hypothesis that preferences are becoming more individualized, because although most parents

claimed to support gender equality, they still varied quite a bit in such areas as how long they

thought their children should ideally stay at home, what is the best age for children to start

attending daycare and whether parental leaves should be shared completely equally or not.

When it came to their actual choices, moreover, the variety of outcomes was even greater.

Our study also gives support to ideas about the importance of post-modern values. Both

Sweden and Norway score high on scales of post-modern values and it seems that more

highly educated Norwegian and Swedish parents are likely to place high value on life-quality

issues sometimes even at the expense of material loss. Thus, they are likely to want to stay at

home for longer periods to be able to spend more time with their children – but they are also

more likely than other groups to want to share the leave time rather equally. The vast majority

of people, whom we interviewed from all educational levels and class backgrounds also

thought that it is best for the children to start daycare at a later date than when the official

parental leave period ends (normally they thought the child should be 18-30 months old) and

that the child should only attend daycare around 6 hours a day until the age of two or more.

Interestingly, even though most parents claimed to support gender equality, similar to

Bekkengen’s (2002) study, our interviewees tended to discuss in terms of what is best for the

child both in arguing for the need for fathers to stay at home for longer periods and for the

24

need to have good high quality daycare, as well as their arguments for what is the best age for

children to begin attending daycare. Thus, although conservatives often claim that gender

equality means women gain at the expense of their children, our interviews indicate that

arguments in favor of the “child’s best” can lead to support for greater gender equality. A

typical statement came from a father who claimed: “it is clearly good for the child and

everyone else if [the parental leave time] is shared as equally as possible” (MSMC3). Another

parent remarks: “Yes, for the child it is very good if there is not any difference between the

mother and father, in any way, but rather it is good if both take care of the child equally well

and in the same way” (MSMC7).

Even though our results show that individualization processes and the rise of post-

modern values play a major role and that parents basically accept the aims of family policies,

this does not mean that our results only show that culture is important. Cultural values interact

in a dynamic process with institutional development. First, the fact that parents share the aims

of the policies does not simply mean that Norway and Sweden introduced these policies

because of popular pressure. Rather, historical studies indicate that the governments began

introducing these policies before there was widespread support. Thus, policies seem to have

influenced attitudes. Of course, it is beyond the scope of this study to tackle this question, as

our interviews cannot show such causality; this study can only show that virtually all

interviewees accept now the cultural norms behind this policies. However, our vignette

questions do clearly indicate that policy changes would indeed influence choices, which

indicates that institutions also matter. For example, the vast majority of parents claim they

would have stayed at home with their children for much shorter periods if there was not any

paid parental leave.

Finally, we can point out that despite the great theoretically support for gender equality,

biological essentialism still plays an important role in the attitudes of our interviewees, as all

25

the interviewees think that the mother should stay at home for a rather long period in the

beginning. One of the most striking results in our interviews is that all the parents thought that

mothers and fathers should share the parental leave time, although not all believed that it was

important to share it equally. Furthermore, they thought that after this leave period both

should engage in paid work. There was not a single case that explicitly said that they preferred

a traditional division of roles between the mother and father. Even though some of the parents

stressed that sharing does not mean that mothers and fathers have exactly the same roles and

do exactly the same things, they basically supported a model were mother’s as well as father’s

have dual roles as both caregivers and breadwinners. Consequently, at least theoretically, their

beliefs fit in well with the official policy goals.

However, almost all interviewees thought the mother should be the main carer in the

beginning because of the need to breast-feed the baby. Thus, they thought that mothers are the

more important parent in the first months, while the father becomes more important when the

child gets older. The vast majority of our interviewees hold the ideal that the mother should

stay at home at least 10 – 12 months with the new-born child before going back to work, then

the father take parental leave until the child starts attending a childcare center at the age of 1.5

to 2.5 years old. In fact, when we asked vignette questions about how they would have done

things differently if they had two years of full parental leave benefits, the vast majority

claimed that they would have shared the leave time more equally, which contradicts the

claims that many scholars have made that longer parental leaves are traps for women, as only

women would take them. Of course, we cannot know what would really happen if policies

changed and the leave period were made longer, but we should point out that while it is true

that countries with longer periods of parental leaves basically have much less gender equality,

this is only true if one looks at the amount of months of paid leave. If one instead looks at the

amount of months of generously paid leaves, in which parents receive at least two-thirds of

26

previous income, then the Scandinavian countries (plus Germany after its recent reforms)

have the longest leave periods and also the greatest amount of gender equality (Pfau-Effinger

and Saxonberg, forthcoming).

27

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29

INTERVIEWS

Mothers in working-class area in Oslo

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

FOWC1 35-44 Married 4 Nurse 4 FOWC2 35-44 Married 4 Psykologist 4 FOWC3 35-44 Unmarried 4 Nurse 4 FOWC4 45-54 Living together 4 Advisor 4 FOWC5 45-54 Living together 2 Businessowner 4 FOWC6 45-54 Married 4 Financial advisor 4 FOWC7 25-34 Married 4 Regenskapsansvarlig

i firma 2

FOWC=Female Oslo Working-Class

Mothers in middle-class area in Oslo

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

FOMC1 35-44 Living together 4 Leader in Telenor 2 FOMC2 35-44 Married 2 Own business 4 FOMC3 35-44 Married 2 Hjelpepleier 2 FOMC4 45-54 Married 4 Psykologist 5 FOMC5 35-44 Married 4 Architect 4 FOMC=Female Oslo Middle-Class

Fathers in working-class area in Oslo

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

MOWC1 45-54 Married 4 Produktspesialist i kortselskap

4

MOWC2 35-44 Married 4 Police investigator 4 MOWC3 45-54 Married 2 Construction

worker, boss 4

MOWC4 45-54 Living together 4 Forlagsredaktör 4 MOWC5 35-44 Married 4 Regionsleder i Jernia 2 MOWC=Male Oslo Working-Class

Fathers in middle-class area in Oslo

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

MOMC1 55-64 Married 4 Bedriftsleder i eiendomsselskap

4

MOMC2 45-54 Married 4 UD 4 MOMC3 45-54 Married 5 Försteamanuensis 4 MOMC=Male Oslo Middle-Class

30

Mothers in working-class area in Stockholm

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

FSWC1 35-44 Married 4 Economist 4 FSWC2 35-44 Living together 4 Preschool

teacher in leading position

2

FSWC3 35-44 Married 4 Work in art gallery

4

FSWC4 25-34 Married 4 Journalist 4 FSWC5 25-34 Living together 2 Garbage

collector (sick leave)

2

FSWC6 ? Married 2 Work in store 2 FSWC7 35-44 Divorced 4 Own business,

webdesign 4

FSWC8 35-44 Living together 4 Bitr. konstruktör

4

FSWC9 25-34 Married 4 Nurse 2 FSWC10 45-54 Living together 1 Vårdbiträde 1 FSWC=Female Stockholm Working-Class

Mothers in middle-class area in Stockholm

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

FSMC1 25-34 Married 4 Student (nurse) 4 FSMC2 45-54 Single 4 Own business,

author etc. Father not present

FSMC3 35-44 Divorced 4 Manager in a store

4

FSMC4 45-54 Married 2 TV4 redaktör, news editor

4

FSMC5 35-44 Married 2 Manager in a store

4

FSMC6 35-44 Living together 3 Student 1 FSMC7 45-54 Divorced 4 Pre-school

teacher 2

FSMC8 35-44 Married 5 Ph D student 4 FSMC9 35-44 Living together 1 Manager in a

store 2

FSMC10 35-44 Married 4 Teacher 3 FSMC=Female Stockholm Middle-Class

31

Fathers in working-class area in Stockholm

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

MSWC1 45-54 Married 4 Salesman 4 MSWC2 35-44 Married 4 Revisor 4 MSWC3 45-54 Divorced 1 Inköpschef 1 MSWC4 35-44 Married 4 Pre-school

teacher 4

MSWC5 35-44 Divorced 4 Chef 2 MSWC6 45-54 Married 4 Taxi driver 4 MSWC7 35-44 Married 2 Own business,

restaurant 4

MSWC8 45-54 Married 4 Musician 4 MSWC9 35-44 Divorced 4 Engineer 2 MSWC10 45-54 Married 2 Work in bank 4 MSWC=Men Stockholm Working-Class

Fathers in middle-class area in Stockholm

Code Age Civilstatus Education 1- 5 (1=lowest)

Profession Education other parent

MSMC1 35-44 Married 4 Student 3 MSMC2 35-44 Married 4 Engineer 5 MSMC3 35-44 Married 4 Unemployed

(archeologist) 2

MSMC4 35-44 Living together 3 Sick leave/unemployed

4

MSMC5 35-44 Divorced 4 Psykoterapeut 4 MSMC6 45-54 Married 4 Manager 4 MSMC7 45-54 Married 4 Management

consultant 4

MSMC8 45-54 Married 3 Owner taxi company

2

MSMC9 35-44 Living together 4 Salesman 4 MSMC10 35-44 Married 4 Sjukhusfysiker 2 MSMC=Men Stockholm Middle-Class

32

Table 1. Population aged 16-64 years broken down by gender and activity, 2010

Norway Sweden

Women Men Women Men

Number aged 16- 64 years (1000) 1 583 1 653 2 947 3 043

Of whom (per cent):

Employed, total 73 77 71 76

Full-time 44 67 43 67

Part-time 30 10 28 9

Unemployed 2 3 6 7

Outside of the labour force 24 19 22 16

Total 100 100 100 100

Diagram 1: Percentage of Leave Time Taken by Fathers

01020

3040

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

DK FL ICE NOR S

Sources: Social Protection in the Nordic Countries: Scope, Expenditure and Financing 2008/2009 and Nordic Social Statistical Committee, 2010, Published by the Nordic Social Statistical Committee (NOSOSCO), Editor: Johannes Nielsen, Translated by: Lone Dalgaard from: Social tryghed i de nordiske lande 2008/09, København: NOSOSCO 2010 and Social Protection in the Nordic Countries: Scope, Expenditure and Financing 2008/2009 2009/10 , Nordic Social Statistical Committee, 2011, Published by the Nordic Social Statistical Committee (NOSOSCO), Editor: Johannes Nielsen, Translated by: Lone Dalgaard from: Social tryghed i de nordiske lande 2009/10, København: NOSOSCO 2011.

33

Table 2. Children in Norway and Sweden in receipt of public childcare

as a percentage of all children in the age group, 1975-2010.

Norway Sweden Norway Sweden

1-2 years old 1-2 years old 3-5 years old 3-5 years old

1975 3 17 9 26

1984 10 41 37 58

1990 17 45 53 68

1995 36 53 70 76

2000 37 60 78 86

2005 54 67 91 95

2010 79 70 96 97

Source: Blom-Hansen & Henneberg, 1998; NOSOSCO, 2011