Couples' Transitions to Parenthood: Analysing Gender and Work in Europe

Abstract

It is common for European couples living fairly egalitarian lives to adopt a traditional division of labour at the transition to parenthood. Based on in-depth interviews with 334 parents-to-be in eight European countries, this book explores the implications of family policies and gender culture from the perspective of couples who are expecting their first child. Couples' Transitions to Parenthood: Analysing Gender and Work in Europe is the first comparative, qualitative study that explicitly locates couples' parenting ideals and plans in the wider context of national institutions. This unique analysis of transitions to parenthood in contemporary Europe focuses on Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and Poland. It explores how parents' agency varies along with policy-culture gaps in their countries and provides evidence of their struggle to adapt to, or resist, socially desired paths and patterns of change. In fact, the ways in which institutional structures limit possible choices and beliefs about motherhood and fatherhood are linked in ways that often go unnoticed by social scientists, policymakers and parents themselves. This cutting-edge book will be of interest to social scientists, political scientists, journalists and policymakers. Parents-to-be will also find value in this analysis of gender in parenthood.