Gender equality following parental union dissolution is increasing
A new study by demographers at Stockholm University shows that gender equality, measured in the share of days fathers take off work to care for a sick child, is higher after union dissolution than it was when the parents still lived together. This silent revolution in family behaviour is mainly explained by 50/50 living arrangements of the children.
A new study by demographers Helen Eriksson and Martin Kolk at the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, shows that alternating residence for children in Sweden has increased sharply in recent decades. Among the children whose parents´ unions dissolve today, about half live alternately with their parents following the dissolution.
Gender equality on the increase
In the new study in the journal Social Forces the Stockholm researchers use administrative register data to estimate the distribution of sick-child leave between the parents – both before and after the dissolution. The results show that fathers take a larger proportion of sick-child leave days after union dissolution as compared to what they did before.
Photo: Leila Zoubir
“What we are seeing is a silent revolution in family organization. Ever since union dissolutions began to increase almost a century ago, they have almost exclusively led to a single mother with full care responsibility for her children. 50/50 living arrangements is one of the most major shifts in family arrangements that we have seen in recent times. Sweden is unique in the world in that such a large group of children continue to have a close relationship with both their parents," says Helen Eriksson.
The trend towards Swedish fathers taking more time off work to be at home with their children has been going on for a long time. But in the past in Sweden—and in most other countries today—it did not matter how engaged a father was to his children before a union dissolution. Once the couple dissolved, the children almost always went to live with their mother. What can also be demonstrated in the study is that fathers not only continue to be present fathers after dissolution, but that their sick-child leave even increases.
Household norms shape gendered behaviour
The study follows the latest gender research by showing the importance of the joint household in functioning as what research has called a "gender factory". Helen Eriksson says that in interview studies of opposite-sex couples, the woman and the man often agree on their unequal division of labour in the home. Even if they argue about, for example, the dishes, there is general agreement that the woman is better at the home's "project management" or that the father should take a smaller part of the parental leave. Over time, sharing a household therefore tends to lead to the mother taking care of the planning and the father carrying out what is planned.
“50/50 living arrangements turns this kind of dynamic upside down. It's no longer possible to take on these heavily gendered roles—the mother cannot plan her ex's household and the father cannot wait for it to happen—and thus they are broken," says Helen Eriksson.
Parental union dissolution no longer equal social vulnerability
Although the study shows that dissolutions in Sweden today lead to more equality, the study should not be interpreted as showing that union dissolutions are the path to gender equality. For many, a dissolution is a difficult process that can hardly be seen as something positive. Instead, what the study shows is that the strongly negative effect of dissolutions can be broken. For mothers, a dissolution no longer automatically means the socially vulnerable situation of being a single mother struggling to make ends meet. For fathers, it no longer means the start of what in many cases has meant lifelong loneliness, a loneliness that for many men has been strongly linked to mental illness.
Helen Eriksson continues her research on parents' absence from work to take care of their children and how to make it possible to create a labour market where it is natural for both women and men to reduce their working hours to take care of their children. Right now, she is looking at whether managers' gender attitudes can explain why many employees feel that it is possible to take a longer maternity leave than a paternity leave, even if they hold the same type of job.
Read the article Parental union dissolution and the gender revolution in Social Forces
Last updated: June 27, 2024
Source: Communications Office