Lack of discussion drives traditional gender roles in parenthood

(Press-News.org) Conversations about parental duties continue to be led by mothers, even if both parents earn the same amount of money, finds a new study by a UCL researcher.

A new study by Dr Clare Stovell (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education & Society), published in the Journal of Family Studies, highlights how a lack of discussion between parents about important choices such as parental leave, work and childcare is perpetuating traditional gender roles.

The study found that women usually lead the conversations and there is little discussion about the man’s work schedule, even in cases where the woman earns as much or more than her partner.

Dr Stovell said: “These interviews indicate there are engrained and unquestioned expectations for fathers to work full-time, while mothers take on the primary carer role through long maternity leaves, followed by a reduction in working hours, even where women are equal or higher earners.”

Dr Stovell interviewed 25 professional couples in the UK in 2017-2018 and found that they rarely discussed or negotiated important decisions about work and family after becoming parents.

Instead, women usually led the conversations, focusing on non-parental childcare options and how they may be able to adapt their own work patterns.

The research found that there were four key reasons for this:

Traditional ideas about gender roles (i.e. the expectation that the mother does the bulk of the childcare provided a default for parents to follow.) Not realising the risk of falling into traditional gender roles (i.e. not being aware of the need for active discussions to achieve equitable outcomes when becoming parents. Couples regretted not having discussed more, only realising later that it was necessary.) No strong reason to discuss the man’s work schedule (i.e. decisions tended to be initiated by external factors, like nursery waiting lists and employer deadlines, which were not focused on fathers.) Men being unsure of how to start the conversation (i.e. fathers having a fear of creating tension or encroaching on the mother’s right to maternity leave. The current shared leave policy, which is based on women transferring their leave, does not offer men the opportunity to make genuine decisions about sharing leave and puts all the decision-making efforts onto women.) For example, one father who was interviewed said: “So having that conversation with a mother-to-be who’s pregnant as well, it’s kind of like, I wouldn’t want to go there! I think if you’re just going to your wife or girlfriend ‘do you want to share your maternity’, I don’t know. You’re saying it there, ‘your maternity’, it is theirs. You might get the wrong reaction.”

Another father who took shared leave added: “I think to be honest she was much more proactive than me, thinking ahead to how things might work out. […] I definitely remember her coming home and saying ‘oh, you know, we could do it this way or that way’. So, she definitely drove that decision.”

The study also found that couples tended not to calculate costs of various different options, but instead calculated whether their preferred option was affordable. Decisions were therefore often based only on assumptions about what was financially viable – and weren’t necessarily accurate.

As a result of the findings, Dr Stovell is calling on families, organisations, schools and policymakers to support active decision-making to help couples share work and family duties more equally.

Dr Stovell said: “Despite the expectation that couples would discuss and negotiate work-family decisions before becoming parents, these findings suggest that manyare make these decisions individually, especially women, and often without explicit discussions.

“This highlights the need for better support and awareness to achieve a more equal sharing of responsibilities. For example, women and men at the beginning of their career trajectories should be actively encouraged and supported to proactively plan for changes in their working arrangements in the event of having children.

“Equally, organisations and policy makers also have an important role to play in providing catalysts for couples to discuss the work-family balance for fathers, including more generous non-transferable leave provision to fathers – i.e. an individual entitlement to more than two week’s leave - and active support for flexible working.”

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

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