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2007:11 A Permanent or Temporary Change? The Arrangement of Gender Roles in Families with Fathers Participating in Childcare |
Hana Maříková (ed.), Marta Vohlídalová |
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The participation of fathers in caring for and raising their children is regarded as one of the ways in which it is possible to break down social and cultural gender-based inequalities. This study therefore aims to answer the question of whether in families where the father is involved in caring for children in the early stage of their lives there is an erosion of gender inequalities in the family, or whether what occurs is just a modification of the given status quo. The study also looks at the question of at what point gender equality is or can be established in the family and what is the connection between gender equality in the family and gender inequality in the society at large. The study opens with an analysis of quantitative surveys conducted on the topic. This analysis forms the framework for applying the analysis of qualitative data in a wider social context. The study is centred on a special qualitative survey conducted in 2006 using semi-standardised interviews, the objective of which was to obtain a picture of how the parental and non-parental roles of the research participants are structured and how their parental and gender identities are shaped and reflected. The study does not however limit its analysis of the subject to just the above-mentioned sources and draws also on observations and findings from other relevant domestic and foreign research relating to this issue.
Keywords
Maternity, paternity, shared parenthood, active/caring fatherhood, gender in/equality, hegemonic masculinity, caring father, working mother, parenting, work for the family, domestic work
Summary
The participation of fathers in caring for and raising their children is regarded as one of the ways in which to break down social and cultural gender-based inequalities. This study therefore aims to answer the question of whether in families where the father is involved in caring for children in the early stage of their lives there is an erosion of gender inequalities in the family, or whether what occurs is just a modification of the given status quo.
Active/caring fathers deal with the situation of caring for children and the household in different ways: they employ various strategies, are capable of redefining and restructuring their roles in various ways, or even reconstructing their identity, and they experience and interpret this situation individually. The same applies to their return to work after leave. However, both situations are relatively ‘new’ for them, and no pre-existing scenario or plan of approach exists for either parent (including the mother) to follow in this regard.
The first chapter of this study provides a theoretical-methodological introduction to the issue of the gender organisation of society and especially the issue of gender in/equalities in the family, which are reflected not just in the concepts of motherhood, fatherhood, or parenthood, but even in the way caring for children in the family is structured, how domestic work is interpreted, and the meanings and valuation assigned to these activities by the very actors involved in them. In this regard, the author of this draws attention to the issue of the de-gendering of activities understood and defined in gendered terms and the significance of the use of ‘neutral’ references. The first chapter also contains a section on methodology pertaining to qualitative research that was conducted and produced the data on which the qualitative analyses in Chapters Three and Four of this publication are based.
The qualitative analysis is preceded by an analysis of quantitative data in Chapter Two. The issue of caring for and raising children and the issue of the division of labour in the household were studied on representative samples of the population in the sociological surveys ‘Changes 2005’ and ‘Parents 2005’, conducted by the Gender and Sociology Department in cooperation with Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology AS CR in Prague. This analysis provides the framework for the qualitative analysis. Analysis of quantitative data reveals the prevailing way in which work in the family and the household is divided between married or unmarried partners within the predominant type of family arrangement to date – the heterosexual family – over the course of the family cycle. The author of this chapter, Marta Vohlídalová, reaches the conclusion that the division of household tasks and the responsibility for caring for children in Czech families is still very traditional. Women continue to perform most household tasks and care for the children, despite the fact that the majority of them also work. Men, who usually identify with the role of family provider or breadwinner, participate little in the sphere of ‘reproductive’ life. In most families the couple follows the ‘traditional partner’ roles, where the woman spends more time on household work and caring for the children than the man. Family models in which these responsibilities are divided equally or in reverse by far make up the minority. More common is the model of a ‘mixed division’ of responsibilities, where the woman spends more time on household work than the man but the parents participate equally in caring for the children.
Although this type of analysis represents more of a depersonalised view of social reality, its findings are introduced into a gender-explanatory framework. This ‘gender-objective’ view of social reality complements the perspective based on the premise that the human world is created by the actors in it, or in other words it puts emphasis on the construction of social reality by individuals or collectives.
The focal point of the study is an analysis of the qualitative study of situations where the man is (also) on parental ‘leave’ (see Chapter Three) and then when he begins (again or full time) to work (see Chapter Four). Although the purpose of this analysis was to uncover how the male and female participants in the study construct their everyday reality in the given or in pre-defined life situations, how they interpret them, what significance and purpose they ascribe to their behaviour and actions in these life situations, or in other words, to capture ‘their definitions’ (constructions) of social reality, the analysis is not just a mere reproduction of how they see the world, but rather also contains the researcher’s evaluation and interpretation, supported theoretically and methodologically in gender analysis and its critical perspective.
The analysis of data drawn from interviews showed that the incursion of active/caring fathers into the private sphere is a process with ambivalent consequences for gender equality. The model in which gender roles are reversed is a model that does break down both the idea of the remote father-provider and the idea of the mother as the only appropriate caregiver, which undermines the idea that this unequal gender arrangement in the family is a necessity, but it can also represent a model in which gender inequality is produced anew or again. This can occur as a result of an evaluation mechanism, wherein activities performed by men are appraised as ‘more valuable’, based on a one-sided positive evaluation and appreciation of men, though not usually women, for performing the activities they are presented with when roles are exchanged: men are valued for performing childcare tasks but women providing for the family are not. It is found that for achieving gender equality between partners the decisive factor is not just whether the work required to take care of the family and the household and work for the family are equally divided between the two parents, but also what basis or what principle lies behind the social evaluation of the activities performed in the view of the couple itself. Gender equalities are also reproduced between partners on the basis of the advantages, or privileges, that men enjoy and which women in the same situation do not have. The reproduction of gender inequality in the division of household work is especially affected by the fact that men’s participation is governed by freedom of choice while women’s participation by necessity, by the fact that the activity has to be performed. The reproduction of gender inequalities at the micro-level occurs by various means or mechanisms. Thus, gender inequality in the family is not necessarily established by a situation where the man participates or co-participates (more) equally in caring for children and the household when a child is not regularly attending a childcare facility for preschool-age children (i.e. during the period of parental leave).
From the perspective of how work in the family is arranged (see Chapter Four) an important factor was found to be not just whether the men were capable of ‘redefining’ themselves as the ‘family men’ but also whether more than one child was born in the family and how that situation was evaluated from the perspective of the advantages or disadvantages of the previous arrangement. The more balanced division in the participative model was often achieved on the basis of outside sources of ‘assistance’, because the performance of essential activities were provided by a third person – usually a woman, whether from within the extended family (grandmother) or outside the family in the form of paid (inexpensive) women’s labour. Paradoxically, gender equality between parents can be achieved by taking advantage of persistent gender inequalities in society as a whole (the fact that women’s labour is free or relatively cheap, compared to other types of labour, and is used to provide care for a child or the household).
Chapter Five closes the study with a summary of the most important findings from both analyses. The author of the chapter points out that in connection with achieving gender equality between parents one basic question surfaced repeatedly during the analysis of qualitative data: ‘How possible is it individually to achieve equality between parents when the social system that the couple belongs to does not operate on the basis of gender equality?’ The answer to this question warrants the attention of further research.
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publikace SOU k prodeji celkovy seznam 6-08.pdf |
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