Fathers Taking Leave Alone in the UK – A Gift Exchange Between Mother and Father?

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a gradual enhancement of British fathers’ rights in the workplace, even though the UK has one of the longest maternity leaves in OECD countries. From April 2003, for the first time, British fathers were given a legal right to take a 2 week paid paternity leave after the birth of a child, building on a 3 month unpaid parental leave entitlement available since 1999. In April 2011 a new right to allow fathers to take up to 6 months Additional Paternity Leave (APL) during the child’s first year, if the mother returns to work before the end of her maternity leave, was introduced. This chapter examines the experiences of six British fathers who were some of the first to take up this opportunity. The study as a whole explored couples’ negotiations and experiences of leave divisions, drawing on the proposition that intimacy is a mediating factor in gender and parenting roles. The accounts portray how, despite men’s lack of formal individual entitlement to leave, they tended to be positioned as the decision makers in taking leave. Women’s structural agency, as higher earners and as holders of the policy entitlement, was often underplayed. Drawing on Hochschild’s writings on the ‘gift economy’ of couples, we suggest that couple negotiations around APL can be conceptualised as a form of gift exchange.