Documents Brandth, Berit 2 results

"Research on work-family balance has seen flexible work arrangements as a key solution for reconciling work and family, but it has given contradictory results in regard to fathers. This article focuses on flexible parental leave for fathers in Norway, which until now has rarely been studied. Based on interviews with 20 fathers, the article explores their experiences with flexible organization of the leave, which provides them with a menu of choices, and considers how it affects their caring. Findings show that it allows work to invade care, produces a double stress and promotes half-way fathering. Flexible use of the father's quota tends to confirm fathers as secondary carers instead of empowering them as carers."

"The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the development of parental leave in the Nordic countries in the last decade or so and explain the different approaches taken by individual countries in this regard. Focusing on recent developments, though mainly on the provision of a father's quota, we discuss whether we are actually witnessing a paradigm shift in some of these countries, i.e. a movement away from an emphasis on the dual earner/dual carer model and a reverting back to a more traditional family model approach where the mother is seen as the main parent. This change is commonly presented under the guise of it respecting the ‘free choice' of individual families. Furthermore, the article asks why the changes in question have taken place and examines the positions of different political parties towards the issue. The article shows that the Nordic countries are developing somewhat different policies and the intra-Nordic gap in both policies and politics seems to be increasing rather than narrowing."