Child-Centered Versus Work-Centered Fathers’ Leave: Changing Fatherhood Ideals Versus Persisting Workplace Dynamics

Abstract

Fathers’ parental leave use has often been explained by differing fatherhood ideals among low vs. highly educated fathers. However, recent research reveals that 75% of the educational-level impact stems from workplace differences. Therefore, a deeper understanding of how workplace dynamics interact with both fathers’ ideals and actual leave practices is needed. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Norwegian fathers with and without higher education, we explore how different workplace dynamics, especially the degree of individual competition, interact with fatherhood ideals and fathers’ actual leave practices. We find strong adherence to the idea of ‘involved fatherhood’ and fathers’ quota across educational levels and workplace dynamics but large variation in practices. Our analyses show how childcare responsibility and absence from work responsibility do not necessarily correspond and how formal leave uptake and actual leave practices may differ. Our findings indicate that non-transferable fathers’ leave may dissolve former attitude-based divisions, as fathers across educational levels in collectively organized jobs support and practice child-centered leave. Still, fathers in competitive jobs may continue to practice ‘work-centered fatherhood’ despite their strong gender-egalitarian beliefs and formal leave uptake. Hence, workplace dynamics—especially the degree of individualized competition and the fear of becoming replaceable—may be more relevant than fatherhood ideals to understand and enhance fathers’ actual leave use and involved fatherhood practices.

1. Introduction

The 2019 EU regulation on non-transferable fathers’ leave has brought policies and discourse surrounding involved fatherhood to the forefront in many European countries. The aim of the EU regulation is twofold: promoting gender equality and enhancing the relationship between father and baby. Studies show that early paternal involvement, including time alone with the baby, is important for fathers to develop independent care competence (e.g., Brandth and Kvande 2016). Moreover, fathers who are involved in parenting early on remain more involved over time. Early father involvement is found to impact future division of paid and unpaid work (Norman 2020). Increasing fathers’ leave uptake has therefore become a pertinent issue across Europe, and understanding the processes and mechanisms that enable or limit fathers’ leave uptake and their active participation in parenting has become crucial, as these factors can have profound implications for broader societal and familial dynamics.

Earlier research has found that highly educated fathers are more likely to take extended leave from work compared to less educated fathers (Sundström and Duvander 2002; Lappegård 2008; Geisler and Kreyenfeld 2011), often attributed to the documented association between higher education and gender egalitarian attitudes (Cunningham 2008; Sullivan 2010). In contrast, new research has found that three-quarters of the educational effect on fathers’ leave length disappears when comparing fathers within workplaces (Eriksson et al. 2022). Therefore, they argue in favor of a shift from understanding fathers’ leave as an individual- and couple-level decision to an adaptation to constraints of the workplace.

In the literature, different theoretical explanations exist regarding the roles of the workplace and the family. Scholars argue that there has been a general lack of attention to the complex intersection between ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of fatherhood, work–life balance, and gender relations (Crespi and Ruspini 2016). Hence, these cultural challenges need to be more thoroughly scrutinized and theorized. Furthermore, a systematic review of the factors impacting men’s use of parental leave concludes that as fathers’ leave use is influenced by both political regulatory forces and organizational factors, such as firms’ culture and practices, there is a need for research that covers the interactive relationships between regulatory, organizational, and family dynamics (Pizarro and Gartzia 2024). In sum, a deeper understanding is required on how workplace environments interact with family dynamics and societal norms to either hinder or empower men’s use of parental leave as well as their actual fathering practices.

There is a small but growing literature on the role of the workplace. This literature has focused on factors like how workplaces interact with transferable vs. non-transferable leave (Brandth and Kvande 2016, 2019a, 2019b), lack of managerial support (Bloksgaard 2015; Moran and Koslowski 2018), and the challenges of taking leave in the private sector (e.g., Haas and Hwang 2018a), particularly in competitive work environments (Halrynjo and Lyng 2009, 2017; Halrynjo and Mangset 2022, 2024). Two concepts appear as particularly important for understanding the role of the workplace for parental leave: the issue of the ideal unencumbered worker (Acker 2006) and replacement or substitutability at the workplace (Goldin 2021). Haas and Hwang (2018a, 2018b) especially emphasize that expectations about the ideal worker embedded in the culture of the work organization limit fathers’ leave-taking as work intensification and job specialization make fathers see themselves as too indispensable to take much leave. Further, a mixed-methods study exploring workplace characteristics hindering parental leave use in German workplaces (Samtleben et al. 2019) argues that fear of professional repercussions and lack of replacement at work inhibit fathers’ leave. Similarly, a mixed-methods study from Finland contends that obstacles to taking long leave are related to fathers’ ideals about a committed worker and to the nature and organizing of work, including the lack of arrangements for replacing men taking leave (Närvi and Salmi 2018).

In this article, we contribute to the literature on fathers’ parental leave in several ways. First, we discuss the concept of ‘involved fatherhood’ and the alignment or misalignment of ideals and practices among high- vs. low-educated fathers in earlier research. Second, to explore the complexity of how workplace dynamics may shape fathers’ leave use, we draw on the theories of the unencumbered ideal worker norm (Acker 2006) and Neely’s work on the ideal portfolio worker (Neely 2020, 2022) before contributing to the research field by expanding the concept with our exploration of fathers’ actual leave practices as a response to the degree of risks and costs of substitutability at work (see Goldin 2021) and introducing the ideal of the irreplaceable worker (see also Halrynjo and Mangset 2024). We challenge the prevailing understanding of the replacement problem as lack of substitutability/replaceability. Instead, we show how the fear of becoming replaceable and the effort to remain irreplaceable may actually be an important part of the ideal irreplaceable worker norm and thus hinder fathers’ leave within certain workplace dynamics. Building on these theoretical understandings, we utilize in-depth interviews with new fathers in Norway to explore how different forms of workplace dynamics interact with fatherhood ideals in shaping fathers’ leave use. Importantly, while most research does not distinguish between formal/registered leave uptake and actual leave use, we investigate both fathers’ formal uptake and their actual childcare practices.

Empirically, we contribute to the research field by first examining the dual levels of ideals versus practices and the degree of congruence and incongruence between ideals and practices. Second, we explore the dual dimensions of parental leave as (1) primary carer for the baby versus (2) absence from work and work responsibilities and analyze how these dimensions may interact in both expected and surprising ways across educational levels. We distinguish between formal uptake and actual leave practices. This approach allows us to nuance the perspectives of how fathers relate to the responsibilities of childcare and paid work and to explore the role of various workplace dynamics in shaping how parental leave and early fathering practices are utilized by fathers across different educational levels.

In the following sections, we will first discuss the concept of involved fatherhood before we turn to the concept of the ideal worker and our exploration of the ideal irreplaceable worker versus the replaceable worker linked to the discussion of substitutability costs depending on workplace dynamics of individual versus collective risks, responsibilities, and rewards.

1.1. Involved Fatherhood—Ideals and Practices

In earlier generations, fatherhood was typically defined in terms of being the main breadwinner, exempt from childcare, at least in children’s early years (Brannen and Nilsen 2006). During recent decades, a new fatherhood ideal has emerged, emphasizing personal attachment and direct care of young children. This involved-fatherhood model accentuates the emotional father–child bonding and equal sharing of childcare and paid work between parents (Miller 2011).

Despite a general increase in gender-equal attitudes (Esping-Andersen and Billari 2015) and practices (Altintas and Sullivan 2017), parents with higher education and in white-collar jobs are found to generally express more gender-equal attitudes (Lyonette and Crompton 2015) and to share paid and unpaid work more equally than low-educated parents with blue-collar jobs (Evertsson et al. 2009).

However, studies also show incongruities between attitudes and behaviors. In the US, low-educated fathers, who are the least likely to ideologically endorse gender equality, are still found to be the most likely to engage in children’s daily lives and practice ‘private fatherhood’, in contrast to the ‘public fatherhood’ of middle-class fathers displaying their involvement at public events (Shows and Gerstel 2009; Williams 2000). Further, UK studies show that men with lower education and lower earnings who do not report ‘sharing’ still do substantially more domestic work than professional/managerial men who report ‘sharing’ (Lyonette and Crompton 2015). Thus, spoken egalitarianism does not necessarily imply lived egalitarianism (Usdansky 2011).

In the US and the UK, economic factors and limited work–family policies (no or low compensation for parental leave and limited or expensive daycare options) are found to uphold the incongruity between ideals and practices among parents (Gerson 2010; Lyonette and Crompton 2015; Usdansky 2011), as low-income households are less able to pay for childcare, and working-class mothers are more likely to work nights or weekends when the father can take care of the children.

UK fathers employed at lower occupational levels often believe that flexible working arrangements, such as reduced hours, are not available to them (Cook et al. 2021). However, they are actually more likely to share childcare for young children than fathers in managerial and professional occupations. In contrast, the high demands of work intensification in higher-status jobs mean that middle-class fathers invest more effort and hours at work, making it harder to bond with their children (Fagan and Norman 2016).

This article explores how the (in)congruity between fatherhood ideals and early practices unfolds within different workplace dynamics in the Norwegian context of a ‘use-it-or-lose-it‘ fathers’ quota and a high general level of gender equality and family-friendly working life. The case of Norway is specifically relevant, as Norway was the first country to reserve a quota for fathers in the parental leave scheme (Brandth and Kvande 2016).

However, there is a discussion of whether the family policy with its ‘tidy trajectory model’ (approximately one year of paid parental leave, including a quota with the father as primary caregiver, followed by the child’s enrollment in formal daycare, available from when the child is one year old) aligns more with the ideals and practices of the middle class than those of the working class (Stefansen and Farstad 2010). Previous research from Norway shows that fathers without higher education prefer the role as ‘secondary carer’, where the mother stays home during fathers’ leave, and avoid time as primary carer (Brandth and Kvande 2015; Stefansen and Farstad 2010). From this perspective, values and ideals are often presented as class-based and stable, preceding practice. Another perspective holds that gender-egalitarian norms spread from higher- to lower-educated strata (Esping-Andersen and Billari 2015). In line with this, studies show that as daycare for small children changed from being a class-divided to a universal and publicly subsidized option in Norway, favorable attitudes towards daycare dispersed across class divisions (Ellingsæter et al. 2016).

While earlier studies argue that contemporary family politics in the Nordics is customized for middle-class parenting (Stefansen and Farstad 2010; Farstad and Stefansen 2015), we argue that to understand the relationship between ideals and practices and spoken and lived egalitarianism among fathers, we need to explore the role of workplace dynamics and how they interact with family dynamics across educational levels.

1.2. Workplace Dynamics—The Ideal Worker and the Ideal Portfolio Worker

The theory of the ideal worker norm (Acker 2006) emphasizes that the lack of flexibility in organizations—requiring eight hours of continuous work away from home, punctual arrival, total attention to work, and long hours if requested—is incorporated into the image of the male worker, unencumbered from care responsibility. Furthermore, the ‘flexibility stigma’ (Williams et al. 2013) shows how the use of family-friendly work arrangements can be interpreted by superiors, co-workers, and the employees themselves as a signal of moral deficiency. As the flexibility stigma is driven by the ‘work devotion schema’ (Blair-Loy 2003), which reflects cultural assumptions that work demands deserve undivided and intensive allegiance, parental leave or flexible work triggers bias against primary carers.

Atkinson (2022) builds on these theories when he argues that the main challenges preventing greater involvement of new fathers in their parental role are misalignment of formal and informal elements. Written policies may be in place, but the informal long-hour culture and organizational rhythms may still restrict fathers’ agency, leading to reluctance to articulate a caring masculinity.

However, in the new economy, the problem does not seem to be rigorous bureaucratic hierarchies and lack of flexibility. Instead, the norm of the portfolio ideal worker casts workers as independent actors investing in their own portfolio of clients and projects, even when employed by firms (Neely 2020). This ideal requires ongoing investments as workers see their careers as an asset, with the risks and responsibilities shifting from firms to workers (Neely 2020). In portfolio careers driven by the dynamics of individual competition, employees themselves may extend their working hours and shorten their leave due to the competition for clients and projects and thus contribute to the misalignment of formal policies (Halrynjo and Mangset 2022, 2024). This dynamic may result in continuing working time rhythms in conflict with childcare responsibility, despite fathers’ expressed endorsement of caring masculinity.

Even if more varied work/life adaptations are now available to men as the breadwinner norm and traditional masculinity is questioned by the ideal of the involved father, the hierarchical distribution of career and care, privileges, and costs in society may continue to benefit careers over childcare (Halrynjo 2009). Therefore, what is missing in the existing literature is a theoretical and empirical examination of the dynamics and logics creating and upholding the informal elements of working hours and rhythms, beyond hegemonic masculinity norms and traditional bureaucratic work rhythms.

1.3. The (Ir)Replaceable Worker: Substitutability Costs for Employers or Employees?

The concept of substitutability at the workplace—and its potential and threats—may inform our understanding of these dynamics. Goldin (2014, 2021) argues that the problem of work–family conflict is caused by the lack of substitutability in workplaces (scarcity of suitable worker substitutes and the high cost of information transfer) for employers and firms. While Goldin (2014, 2021) points to the benefits of substitution, Halrynjo and Mangset (2022, 2024) highlight the potential costs. Depending on the structure of risks, responsibilities, and rewards in different types of labor markets, the costs of worker substitutability may not only be paid by employers. Several months of parental leave usually require a form of substitution of work and responsibilities.

Studies from several countries emphasize how the lack of replacement at work limits fathers’ leave (see e.g., Samtleben et al. 2019). Substitutability may not only be paid by the firm/employer, as the cost of ‘being replaceable’ may also be paid by the individual worker, even when the leave is statutory and compensated, such as parental leave in Norway. To understand how family-friendly substitutability and flexibility may continue to be marked by a primary carer penalty, we include theoretical perspectives from sociology of markets (Fligstein and Dauter 2007). A professional operating in the market, competing with other professionals, must adhere to the rules of the game, as the market structure defines the level of effort required to stay and succeed. In some parts of the labor market, competition between individual workers is as important as competition between firms (see also Halrynjo and Mangset 2024). ‘Portfolio workers’, who are individually responsible for their own client or project portfolios, often compete on a market where the winner-takes-all (Neely 2020).

The option to invest time and availability increases the chances to win; thus, individualized competition means that substitutability may imply salient costs for the individual worker (Halrynjo and Mangset 2022, 2024). Rather than stereotypical understandings of masculinity, traditional values, or reluctant employers, a theoretical understanding of market mechanisms and the degree of individualization of risks may be key to understanding fathers’ restricted leave use and childcare involvement in these parts of the labor market. Employers in competitive occupations may even support parental leave and offer substitution if the substitutability costs are not so much paid by the employers as by the individual worker.

Even if the employee has the statutory right to return to the formal role, there is still a question of substitution of responsibilities, projects, clients, and positions. Leave users in competitive occupations may be spurred to avoid being substituted during their statutory leave and thus reduce their risk of losing their portfolio of clients or projects. However, avoidance of substitution works best for shorter or flexible leave that can be planned to fit in with work and is thus mostly available for fathers who act as secondary carers and take their leave while their partner is at home on vacation or unpaid leave or when the child is in daycare. Mothers (or fathers) acting as primary carers during the child’s first year do not have the opportunity of constructing themselves as an irreplaceable worker through avoiding substitution at work (Halrynjo and Lyng 2009; Halrynjo and Mangset 2022).

1.4. Substitutability Structures: Individual vs. Collective Risk of Substitutability

Norway represents a highly interesting case due to the 50-year-long history of paid parental leave. Long paid parental leave may illustrate the dilemmas of the individual risk of substitutability. A crucial point is how the substitution is organized and structured. To analyze and challenge potential individual substitutability costs, we draw on the concept of substitutability structures (Halrynjo and Mangset 2024). The model outlines sustainability structures as a continuum from individual to collective substitutability of responsibility and rewards. One end represents total individualized competition shaping the organization of tasks, risks, rewards, and thus total individualized substitutability costs. The other end represents fully collective organization of responsibility, rewards, and thus collective substitutability costs.

The understanding of sustainable substitutability structures builds on Nancy Fraser’s ideal for gender equity in the welfare state. According to Fraser (1994), we need a ‘universal caregiving model’ where men do their fair share of care work to reach gender equity in the post-industrial welfare state. If men combine career and care work to the same degree as women and institutions are redesigned to reduce the difficulty and strain, both income and time equality would increase. Findings from Norway (Bergsvik et al. 2020) and Sweden (Nylin et al. 2021) indicate that long non-transferable leave for fathers (forced substitutability) may result in lower gender wage gaps, as some substitutability costs are also paid by fathers.

The substitutability model (see Halrynjo and Mangset 2024) predicts that collective organization of responsibilities and rewards and thus a higher degree of sustainable work–family balance are easier to achieve in the public sector due to the distance to the market and absence of competition for clients or projects. Lower individual substitutability costs are further anticipated among shift workers, where the individual worker regularly hands over responsibilities to colleagues. In contrast, the costs of substitutability and family-friendly flexibility are projected to be highest among the self-employed, entrepreneurs, and workers in occupations driven by individualized competition for clients and projects, with options for individualized bonuses and other forms of variable pay. However, fixed-term contracts with individualized competition for a permanent position within the public sector may also increase the individual costs of substitutability and decrease the sustainability. The central concepts defining the sustainability scale are neither sector nor educational level but rather the degree of individual versus collective competition driven by the corresponding organization of responsibilities and rewards (Halrynjo and Mangset 2024).

1.5. Norwegian Context: The Fathers’ Quota and the Dual-Earner/Dual-Carer Model

Like the other Nordic countries, Norway is famous for work–family policies promoting a dual-earner/dual-carer family model (Ellingsæter 2024). Main ingredients are generous parental leave schemes with a quota reserved for fathers and access to high-quality, subsidized childcare for children aged one and above. Enrollment rates in childcare are well above 80 percent already from age one, but parental care during the child’s first year is still a strong norm in Norway, following the length of the paid parental leave. Women’s employment rate is now nearly as high as men’s, and fathers spend more time on housework and childcare than before (Ellingsæter and Kitterød 2023). The standard weekly working time in Norway is 37.5 h, but part-time work is still common among women, and unlike men, women rarely work very long hours. Norway has a highly gender-segregated labor market, with women dominating in the public sector (often standard working hours) and men concentrated in the private sector (more often long hours).

Since 1978, the parental leave scheme has allowed parents to share the leave between them, but few fathers actually used any of the leave, which was quite short at that time. In 1993, the parental leave was significantly extended, and four weeks were reserved for the father. The quota was gradually extended and now constitutes 15 of the total 49 weeks of paid parental leave. A similar part is reserved for the mother (plus three weeks before birth). The remaining weeks can be shared as parents prefer. Each parent is also entitled to one year of unpaid leave. Access to paid parental leave requires employment in 6 of the 10 months prior to take-up.

The fathers’ quota is widely supported (Arntsen 2022), including among employers (Brandth and Kvande 2019b). Employers cannot deny the quota, although some may encourage take-up in periods that are convenient for the organization. Interestingly, more men than women support more equal sharing of parental leave (Evensen et al. 2023). About 90 percent of fathers take the quota (Arntsen 2022), but the sharable part is typically understood as the mother’s entitlement (Brandth and Kvande 2019b), implying that mothers still usually take much longer leaves than fathers. Parental leave, including the fathers’ quota, can be divided into blocks and/or taken part-time in combination with work or studies until the child turns three, even if the child is in daycare. The mother may stay home on vacation or unpaid leave while the father takes the quota. This flexibility of the parental leave system means that we cannot take for granted that registered uptake of fathers’ leave is equivalent to dedicated time and responsibility for the child or the fathers’ actual absence from work and work responsibility.

1.6. Contribution to the Research Field

In this paper, we contribute to the research field by analyzing in-depth interviews with Norwegian fathers with and without higher education to examine how different workplace dynamics, especially the degree of individual competition at work, including risks of being replaceable, interact with fatherhood ideals and fathers’ actual leave use and fathering practices. We explore the dimension of childcare responsibility and the dimension of absence from work responsibility and how the dimensions contrast or correspond, resulting in child-centered or work-centered parental leave. Our qualitative data also allow us to explore the relation between fatherhood ideals and formal leave uptake among fathers with and without higher education to understand limitations in fathers’ actual leave use and their subsequent fatherhood practices.

Based on our findings, we discuss how a mechanism like ‘the logic of individualized competition and replaceability at work’ may be a more relevant dimension than educational level in order to understand (in)congruences between ideals and practices. Further, this article discusses how the availability of policies facilitating work–family integration can change work–family dynamics across societal segments but not necessarily in highly competitive jobs where the individual career is at stake. Thus, this article helps to understand the puzzle formulated by McMunn et al. (2020) of how shared egalitarian ideology and available ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ policies may not be enough to achieve gender equality in work and family life. Our findings indicate that as long as the flexibility of parental leave allows for gender-unequal use, gendered work–family patterns can persist, despite strong gender-equal attitudes and values.

2. Materials and Methods

Our qualitative analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 24 fathers (age: 33–44) in heterosexual relationships, interviewed in 2017 and 2018. Half of the fathers were recruited on the basis that they were entitled to paid leave but had not formally used the (full) fathers’ quota, while the other half were recruited on the basis that they had formally taken the fathers’ quota or more parental leave. The length of the non-transferable fathers’ quota varied between 10 and 14 weeks for the focal child in our analysis. Nineteen of the fathers had more than one child and also referred to experiences with older and younger children. Ten of the fathers had higher education and fourteen had secondary education as their highest educational level. See Table 1 for an overview of the fathers’ leave uptake and education. More detailed information about the respondents is provided in Appendix A 

Table A1. Fatherhood practices, formal leave uptake, education level and workplace.

Fatherhood Practice	Name *	Weeks of Formal Leave Uptake	Father’s Education/Occupation and Sector	Partner’s Education/Occupation/Sector
Type 1: ‘Child-centered father practice’: primary carer—absent from work
1	Arild	16	Secondary/ambulance driver/public sector	Unknown/public sector
1	Fredrik	14	Secondary/store employee/private sector	Secondary/sale/service/private sector
1	Knut	10	Secondary/creative work/youth worker/public sector/self-employed	Bachelor/investigation/private sector
1	Kjell	0/sick leave for childcare	Secondary/sales/private sector	Master/service/private sector
1	Kristoffer	5 (due to misunderstandings)	Secondary/services/private sector	Bachelor/middle manager in chain store/private sector
1	Geir	0 (3 months redundancy pay)	Secondary/construction work/private sector	Secondary/health service/public sector
1	Marius	8 (+time off due to shift work)	Secondary/security guard/private sector	Bachelor/admin work/private sector
1	Bjørn	18	Master/college teacher/public sector	Master/college lecturer/public sector
1	Christian	14	Bachelor/healthcare/public sector	Bachelor/preschool teacher/private sector
1	Didrik	10	Master/manager/voluntary organization	Bachelor/admin staff/public sector
1	Eivind	10	Bachelor/admin staff/public sector	Bachelor/accountant/sector unknown
1	Hallvard	10	Bachelor/teacher/public sector	Bachelor/mercantile work/self-employed
Type 2: ‘Work-centered father practice’: not primary carer—not absent from work
2	Lasse	6 (replacement for summer vacation)	Secondary/middle manager in chain store/private sector	Bachelor/health service/public sector
2	Eirik	0	Secondary/truck driver/private sector	Secondary/healthcare/public sector
2	Gaute	Part-time leave 2 days a week/with daycare	Unclear/driver + self-employed firm/private sector	Bachelor/teacher/public sector
2	Julian	4 (family vacation)	Master/manager/chain store/private sector	Master/lawyer/public sector (80% job)
2	Krister	Unclear amount (self-employed)	Master/real estate/career job/self-employed	Bachelor/healthcare/public sector
2	Andreas	6 (part-time leave/kept job responsibilities)	Master/manager/purchase—career job/private sector	Bachelor/health service/public sector
2	Iver	14 (during mother’s vacation + after child started daycare)	Bachelor/manager/public sector but male-dominated	Bachelor/social worker/public sector
Type 3: ‘Involved but working’: primary carer but not absent from work
3	Adrian	6 (during summer)	Bachelor/ICT/travel agency/private sector	Bachelor/creative prof./(part-time) private sector
3	Martin	No leave (still primary carer)	Secondary/import company/self-employed	Secondary/not working (health issues)
3	Øystein	8 (but during free periods from offshore work)	Secondary/technician/private sector	Secondary/sales consultant/private sector
2	Jarle	12 (available on phone/could not afford to be replaced)	Secondary/construction/private sector	Bachelor/mercantile/private sector
3	Lars	12 weeks (tried to work during leave but gave up)	Secondary/craftsman/self-employed	Secondary/sales/private sector
Type 4: ‘Not involved, not working’: not primary carer—absent from work. None of the fathers in our sample but stories of others and traces of practice.

* All names are fictional.

. While earlier studies in Norway have had difficulty recruiting fathers without higher education to talk about their parental leave experiences (e.g., Brandth and Kvande 2003, 2019a, 2019b), fathers without higher education were easier to recruit in our study. Our challenge was rather that highly educated fathers with no or limited leave were reluctant to participate, referring to the moral stigma of not using the full quota. Hence, our sample is more balanced regarding educational level than several previous qualitative studies of fathers’ parental leave use in Norway.

The informants were recruited by the survey institute Kantar via social media, snowballing, and the ‘Gallup Panel’. The fathers came from different regions, representing large cities as well as smaller rural places. The interviews lasted about one hour and were conducted by telephone or face-to-face in Kantar’s offices in Oslo by two Kantar employees, who acted as our research assistants. The interview was semi-structured and based on an interview guide made by the research team. The fathers were asked about their attitudes and practices regarding the fathers’ quota and sharing of parental leave and gave detailed accounts of their daily lives and routines during the child’s first year, including how they spent their own leave and/or took care of the child without formal leave uptake. We were careful to obtain information about whether or not they acted as primary caregivers, including spending time with the children without the mother present. The interviews were transcribed by Kantar. We found no substantial difference between ‘face-to-face’ and telephone interviews in terms of length, contents, and details.

In analyzing the data, we first examined the interviews and coded the material according to the topics in the interview guide. During this process, we realized that there was not always a clear connection between formally taking paid parental leave and actual fatherhood practice. Whereas some fathers took paid leave without renouncing their job responsibilities and being the primary carer for the child, others took no or little paid leave but were still the primary carer for shorter or longer periods. Accordingly, we re-examined all transcripts and sorted them (using Excel sheets) based on the following dimensions: childcare responsibility at home (primary carer or not) and absence from work responsibility. Based on these dimensions, we identified four ideal types of early fatherhood practices, presented in Figure 1 and Table 1. We alternated between sorting/coding the transcripts and re-reading the entire interviews to ensure that we understood the various statements correctly within each individual situation.

We have been careful to secure the informants’ anonymity. All the names are pseudonyms, occupations are only broadly described, and the child’s gender may have been changed by us. The latter was important to secure the anonymity of fathers not taking leave due to the experienced stigma. The child’s gender did not seem to impact fathers’ involvement in our material. The informants described a close relationship with both daughters and sons. Further, the different geographical locations in our sample did not systematically matter, neither to beliefs and attitudes nor to practices.

Most of the fathers had full-time working partners, and the child started daycare around age one.

3. Results—Endorsement of Leave Quotas and Gender Equality but Variation in Practices

In contrast to earlier studies emphasizing how lower-educated fathers distanced themselves from the ideal of involved fatherhood and sharing of family work (Lyonette and Crompton 2015; Usdansky 2011; Stefansen and Farstad 2010), we found strong ‘spoken egalitarianism’ across educational levels. The majority of fathers strongly argued that both parents should be equal caregivers. The fathers’ quota and its importance to the father–child relationship and fathers’ childcare skills were endorsed across jobs and educational levels. However, one important distinction within the discourse emerged: although fathers in competitive career jobs endorsed the fathers’ quota as important for achieving more gender equality in working life, they did not emphasize bonding, childcare skills, and family life as important.

Contrary to the cohesive ‘spoken egalitarianism’ among the fathers, we found clear variations in fatherhood practices during the child’s first year. However, the variation in fatherhood practices did not follow the pattern of educational level found in earlier research.

In our analysis, we classified the fathers into one of four positions, depending on the dimensions of care responsibility (horizontal) and absence from work responsibility (vertical) during leave (or non-leave) in their accounts (see Figure 1 and Table 1 for an overview and Appendix A Table A1 for details).

Figure 1. Four types of early fatherhood practices: Variations in childcare and absence from work.

Figure 1. Four types of early fatherhood practices: Variations in childcare and absence from work.

Table 1. Parental leave uptake and educational level among fathers with different father practices.

	PARENTAL LEAVE (FORMAL UPTAKE)	HIGHER EDUCATION
Type 1. Child-centered father practice: primary carer—absent from work
Arild	Full leave (quota)	No
Fredrik	Full leave (quota)	No
Knut	Full leave (quota)	No
Kjell	No leave (used sick leave)	No
Kristoffer	Some leave, less than quota	No
Geir	No leave (received redundancy pay)	No
Marius	Some leave, less than quota (+ time off due to shift work)	No
Bjørn	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Christian	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Didrik	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Eivind	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Hallvard	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Type 2. Work-centered father practice: not primary carer—not absent from work
Lasse	Some leave, less than quota	No
Erik	No leave	No
Gaute	Some leave, less than quota	No
Julian	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Krister	Some leave, less than quota (child in kindergarten)	Yes
Andreas	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Iver	Full leave (during mother’s vacation + daycare)	Yes
Type 3. Involved father practice but working: primary carer—not absent from work
Adrian	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Martin	No leave	No
Øystein	Some leave, less than quota	No
Jarle	Full leave	No
Lars	Full leave	No
Type 4. Not involved father practice, not working: not primary carer—absent from work
None of the fathers in our sample but stories about others and traces in own practice

Table 1. Parental leave uptake and educational level among fathers with different father practices.

	PARENTAL LEAVE (FORMAL UPTAKE)	HIGHER EDUCATION
Type 1. Child-centered father practice: primary carer—absent from work
Arild	Full leave (quota)	No
Fredrik	Full leave (quota)	No
Knut	Full leave (quota)	No
Kjell	No leave (used sick leave)	No
Kristoffer	Some leave, less than quota	No
Geir	No leave (received redundancy pay)	No
Marius	Some leave, less than quota (+ time off due to shift work)	No
Bjørn	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Christian	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Didrik	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Eivind	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Hallvard	Full leave (quota)	Yes
Type 2. Work-centered father practice: not primary carer—not absent from work
Lasse	Some leave, less than quota	No
Erik	No leave	No
Gaute	Some leave, less than quota	No
Julian	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Krister	Some leave, less than quota (child in kindergarten)	Yes
Andreas	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Iver	Full leave (during mother’s vacation + daycare)	Yes
Type 3. Involved father practice but working: primary carer—not absent from work
Adrian	Some leave, less than quota	Yes
Martin	No leave	No
Øystein	Some leave, less than quota	No
Jarle	Full leave	No
Lars	Full leave	No
Type 4. Not involved father practice, not working: not primary carer—absent from work
None of the fathers in our sample but stories about others and traces in own practice

Table 1 shows how the fathers in our study are situated across the different types of leave practices. Surprisingly, both type 1 (child-centered father practice), type 2 (work-centered father practice), and type 3 (involved but working) include fathers with and without formal leave uptake. Further, all three types include fathers with and without higher education, and fathers without higher education appear at least as involved as the highly educated fathers; see Appendix A Table A1 for more details.

When the fathers talked about their attitudes towards the quota and why it is important, they all seemed to take for granted that the fathers’ quota implies a period as primary carer, absent from work and work responsibility. However, only half of the fathers who reported formal uptake of the quota represented this ‘child-centered fatherhood practice’ (1, upper-left quadrant, Figure 1). This position consists of fathers who have experienced a period as ‘primary carer’ for the child, disconnected from work and work responsibility. The contrast to this position is found at the bottom right and consists of fathers who have neither been the ‘primary carer’ nor disconnected from their job responsibilities (2, ‘work-centered fatherhood’). In addition, two mixed positions were identified: one includes fathers who have periodically been the ‘primary carer’ but have not been away from work (3, ‘involved but working’), and the other implies using leave to be away from work but without being the primary carer for the child (4, ‘not involved, not working’).

3.1. Type 1: Child-Centered Father Practice—Absent from Work Responsibility

Primary child carer—emphasis on early bonding

The fathers in the upper left quadrant (1, ‘child-centered fatherhood’) describe a period of absence from work, being the primary carer, home alone with the child while the child’s mother was at work. In line with earlier research (Brandth and Kvande 2015; Farstad and Stefansen 2015), several of these fathers had higher education and middle-class jobs in the public or voluntary sector. However, in contrast to earlier research (Farstad and Stefansen 2015; Brandth and Kvande 2015; Usdansky 2011), the low-educated fathers in our study also eagerly expressed both spoken and lived egalitarianism.

Further, the analysis showed that fathers across educational levels and professions highlighted the value and experience of ‘bonding’. Unprompted, expressions of ‘bonding’ continued to appear in the interviews. Fathers without higher education explicitly emphasized the value of being home alone with the child during the baby’s first year, indicating that the discourse of instituting fathers as ‘primary child carers’ with sole responsibility may not be limited to the higher-educated parents. The following quotes from fathers in working-class jobs illustrate this:

To have all day at home with the kid, it was good. […] we were bonding a lot, […]. It is a chance to get to know your child in a completely different way, and really, it is a strange thing to say, but I love the child in a completely different way now. Before [I went on leave], they went to bed before I came home […] but [during my leave] very strong ties were established.

(Arild, ambulance driver)

----

This [fathers’ quota] is a time you never get back. You can never bond like that during the afternoon. […] The bond you build during the weeks of leave is irreplaceable.

(Fredrik, shop assistant)

----

You get to bond with the kid; in a completely different way than if you do not have leave. If the mother is present, then it crawls to the mother. But when the mom is not there… it is good, both for baby and dad…

(Eivind, operational coordinator)

The fathers in the upper left quadrant (type 1, child-centered fatherhood practice), representing both higher and lower education and both middle- and working-class jobs, gave accounts of their daily routines with the child, which often included housework and care for older children. They talked about changing diapers, making breakfast, doing the daycare run with older siblings, playing and cuddling, vacuuming, and making dinner before their partner returned from work. Housework and responsibility for daily care routines seemed to be taken for granted among these fathers. This is in contrast to both findings from time-use studies indicating that fathers rarely multitask and spend little time alone with children (Craig 2006) and early qualitative studies of the fathers’ quota in Norway, where the fathers distanced themselves from housework (Brandth and Kvande 2003). The fathers in our study did not present housework as something particularly heroic. In the words of Fredrik, a shop assistant, it is all about ‘just getting the housework done and making sure everything works’.

‘Primary Carer’ and Absent from Work but Not Formally (Full) Leave User

Somewhat surprisingly, we found that the information on parental leave uptake (zero to 18 weeks) varied unsystematically with the accounts of active childcare and absence from work. Thus, it is possible to present oneself as a leave user without being a primary carer for the baby and/or absent from work. The opposite is also possible: not formally taking leave but still experiencing a period as ‘primary carer’ away from work.

The fathers’ quota is now typically supported among employers in Norway (Brandth and Kvande 2019b), but exemptions may occur. One of the fathers without higher education, Kjell, was told that the company did not have guidelines for leave and would not make them. The employer feared losing the contract to the company they were subcontracting for, and then everyone would lose their job. To cover up the period between the mother’s leave (mother’s quota plus shareable part) and daycare, Kjell took sick leave to care for the child:

Of course, the sick benefit was to avoid the financial burden of it, simply. … It was the only solution we found to make it work until the kid started daycare—without losing too much money.

(Kjell, now sales assistant)

Interestingly, Kjell did not discuss the option of the mother staying home longer. The end of the mother’s paid leave and the need to cover the care gap until daycare started was presented as a fact, suggesting that the former ‘middle-class tidy care pattern’ can be taken for granted also among fathers without higher education.

While most fathers highlighted the importance of the positive bonding between father and child, the lower-educated fathers in working-class jobs also emphasized the stress and challenges of childcare. Still, they argued in favor of shared responsibility. Geir had planned to take the fathers’ quota, but the company went bankrupt. Instead, he got redundancy pay, allowing him to stay home with the baby. His partner needed time to study and work, and he experienced time as ‘primary child carer’, caring for the child alone. In contrast to most fathers stressing the positive bonding experience, Geir argued for equal sharing due to the challenges of staying home:

Staying home and having the responsibility all alone, it is challenging. The mother should also have the chance to leave for work once in a while… […] to socialize with grownups, to meet colleagues and stuff. And so, the father can take some of the responsibility at home, as well.

After some time, he found a new job, but only part-time, and he had to work extra shifts to get sufficient income. He did not ask for parental leave in his new job, as he feared that would move him backwards in the line for extra shifts.

The experiences of Kjell and Geir illustrate the costs of replaceability in low-educated jobs when competing for jobs, contracts, or shifts. However, in their accounts, it becomes clear how the most important thing for Kjell and Geir is to find a way to keep a secure income both in the short run (redundancy pay or sick leave) and in the long run (find a new job and not jeopardize the income by asking for leave). They accept their responsibility to take care of the baby as long as their income is secured, even if it means being creative and using sick leave instead of parental leave. This way of dealing with the challenges of replaceability at work is clearly different from the work-centered father practice found among the highly educated career fathers.

3.2. Type 2: Work-Centered Father Practice: Not Primary Carer, Not Absent from Work

When the job defines the leave.

Despite overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards the fathers’ quota, the analysis also identified accounts of a more work-centered father practice, where the job defines the fathers’ leave. This work-centered practice in the lower right quadrant includes fathers both with and without higher education and working both in middle- and working-class jobs. However, what they do have in common is that they all work in the private sector and have a higher exposure to individualized competition in their jobs than the highly educated fathers in the public/voluntary sector and the lower-educated fathers in more collectively organized businesses in the private sector.

These fathers gave accounts of a work-centered leave practice where they were neither the ‘primary carer’ at home nor abandoned their job responsibilities during their ‘leave’. Despite clearly supporting the quota and the ideal of equal sharing of childcare and paid work, in practice, they focused on limiting their absence from work. In many ways, these fathers resembled the US fathers with high socio-economic status in Usdansky’s (2011) analysis, representing strong spoken, but not lived, egalitarianism.

One of these fathers, Andreas, argued that the leave should be shared equally between the parents and that fathers should be forced to take their share. Despite this strong spoken egalitarianism, he ended up taking a limited fathers’ quota on a part-time basis without reductions in workload. This solution was not explained by a difficult boss/employer nor by a traditional father’s ideal but by his own career ambitions and the dilemma of being an actively involved father at home versus taking a career risk:

Officially, it is easy to take leave. But if you’re away, maybe you lose a project or a role you’ve had … Then you do it [limit your absence] for your own sake, because you want to be someone who can perform. […]

In general, I want to stay home with the baby as long as possible. I want to be an involved father, but I also want to do well at work. And when these two compete, and the mother has a job that is easier to get away from for an extended period, you choose the easy way out…

(Andreas, senior manager)

Andreas explained how prioritizing his own career over long parental leave appeared as ‘the easy way out’ for him as long as the baby’s mother took the responsibility for the child through prolonged leave and paid the costs of reduced pay and potential future career risks. He would have needed stronger coercion and stricter rules with less flexibility in order to actually take what he argued as his ‘fair share of leave’ and thus the costs of reducing his work responsibility for a period.

Julian, another highly educated father with a competitive career job, also stated that it is normal to limit fathers’ leave in his circles due to fear of losing assignments and seniority. His wife was not happy that his leave was reduced to one month’s family vacation. She insisted that he should take leave:

… But we did not come to an agreement. It has been a source of discussion in retrospect. When we started to think about a new child, I had to sign a contract that I must take some leave. Not that I have to take out the whole fathers’ quota, but that I intend to do so.

However, as she also wants a second child, Julian explains that now the contract is modified:

Now, it is rather she who says: ‘Okay, you don’t have to take out the whole quota if you don’t want to.’

(Julian, senior manager)

Julian’s story points towards the dilemma of a mother wanting a more gender-equal sharing of parental leave but also wanting a second child, even if the father is not willing to take the cost of the leave. His story stands in contrast to the working-class fathers, where the need to fill the gap between the mother’s paid leave and daycare was taken for granted, even when the father paid a work-related cost, like Kjell, who was denied parental leave and thus took sick leave and then lost his job.

The work-centered fathers in career jobs acknowledged the costs for mothers but nonetheless prioritized their own careers. Krister, who worked as an investor, had a very flexible work situation. Still, his job defined his leave and his role as a father:

The most important tool for me is my phone. It allows me to work anywhere. Clearly, if I was in with my heart and soul on the leave, it would have been a complicated. …It’s like the leave I’m taking now; I’m not going to turn off the phone and say: ‘now I am all in here’.

Krister recently had a second child. During his upcoming leave, he will do the introduction to daycare, then a three-week family vacation, and then the daycare run:

… now, I work more… unfortunately, so I do not see them [the children] so much, so I think it’s good for me to do the daycare-run, because I’m mostly home just before they go to bed.

(Krister, investor)

Krister stated that he wants to be an involved father. However, in line with the other work-centered fathers in middle-class jobs, he did not present coping with routines and early bonding as important for the relationship with the child. Interestingly, Krister did not draw on the gender-traditional understanding of the mother as the ‘natural’ primary carer; he stated several times that his wife was really bored staying home for such a long time. However, according to him, they had an agreement from the start, which had to be followed.

A Call for More Coercion and Less Flexibility of the Parental Leave System

Despite his own story, Krister eagerly voiced ‘spoken egalitarianism’, arguing that fathers should be more strongly forced to take leave, as in the business sector fathers’ leave could still be avoided. Surprisingly, the highly educated fathers in competitive jobs who themselves had minimized their parental leave were the ones arguing most eagerly that coercion and quotas needed to be enhanced in order to equalize the costs of leave absence among mothers and fathers and thus advance gender equality in working life.

Andreas also voiced a strong spoken egalitarianism and advocated for more coercion and less flexibility, despite his own solution of the ‘easy way out’:

I’m in the opinion that basically [the leave] should be shared equally between the mother and the father. And that the fathers should be forced to take it.… Because I see that if it is voluntary, then many people choose not to take it…

Interestingly, even though the fathers’ quota is non-transferable and often portrayed as coercive, the fathers’ leave is still experienced as voluntary within this segment. In the interviews, it is not clear how the state should force fathers to take (more) leave. However, these fathers argue strongly in favor of gender-equal childcare responsibility and more coercion. Actually, they argue in line with earlier research in Norway warning against part-time or flexible leave, which is found to confirm fathers as secondary carers (Brandth and Kvande 2016).

While biological differences are sometimes used as arguments against the fathers’ quota in popular discourse, Andreas argued quite the opposite:

It is not so natural for a man. It is a bit biological and a bit how society works. Therefore, I think men should be forced to take that leave. I think it’s a little unheard of, really, that it is acceptable for a man to NOT take that responsibility… […]

I am a strong supporter of coercion. I think it would be much easier for the employer to understand that whether there is a man or a woman expecting a baby, there is no difference.

(Andreas, senior manager)

Interestingly, in this quote, the argument of biology is used to firmly contend the need for stronger coercion of fathers to share the leave equally with the mother. Despite this intense spoken egalitarianism, in practice, he does not feel enough pressure and coercion to follow up on his beliefs himself.

In contrast to earlier studies of middle-class fathers in the UK, who, despite their adherence to involved fatherhood, emphasized the male pride and leaned on a taken-for-granted ‘breadwinner masculinity’ (Miller 2011), the fathers in our study, unprompted, kept talking about the challenges being the same for men and women. Nevertheless, as long as the work-centered fathers felt that they could take ‘the easy way out’, as Andreas put it, and thus avoid the costs of being substituted at work, they did so in order to minimize their career risks.

3.3. Mixed Positions

Two mixed positions were also identified: one where the father experienced a period as primary carer but did not leave work or work responsibility (type 3) and one where the father was absent from work but not primary carer (type 4).

3.3.1. Type 3: Primary Carer but Did Not Leave Work or Work Responsibility

The position of primary carer but not away from work (type 3) was clearly identified among the fathers in our study. Jarle, who used to work as a developer, explained that his leave was a bad fit for the company. He had to be available on the phone during leave, as he could not afford to be replaced. However, despite this frustration, Jarle pointed out that this risk also applies to the mother. Thus, the fathers’ quota is a good thing:

Because, she probably also has a job she needs to take care of. And it is generally difficult to get back to a workplace after one year and having to get to know everyone again. And it is very easy to be replaced in one way or another. There are always ways to replace people.

Fathers’ worry of being ‘replaceable’ aligns with previous research in Norway (Halrynjo and Lyng 2009). However, it is not typical for fathers to extend this worry to include their partner’s risk of substitution.

The costs of absence were particularly evident in the situation of self-employed fathers. Martin did not take leave for fear of losing new sales and existing customers and thus the family’s income. Despite not taking leave, Martin experienced time as a primary carer as his partner had health problems:

Therefore, I took a lot of time with the kids, worked a lot from home, and just did the most essential at work. You can say I’ve taken ‘fathers’ quota’ in many ways. I have just not received any compensation for it.

(Martin, working class, self-employed)

Lars also experienced negative consequences for his company:

Because I had to go on leave and focus on childcare, I lost part of the contract. I tried to make up for it by working in the evenings, but it didn’t work out. So, I crashed.

(Lars, working class, self-employed)

Lars was clearly the most negative about the fathers’ quota, in part because he received little payment during leave. Nevertheless, he accepted it: ‘We did not have childcare or a daycare solution. And my partner had to go back to work. That was it’. Lars did not question the mother’s need to return to work when her paid leave ended, even though he paid a price. This was just presented as a fact.

3.3.2. Type 4: Absent from Work but Not Primary Carer

Being absent from work but not a primary carer (type 4) was not presented as morally acceptable, and none of the fathers admitted to this practice themselves. Instead, they referred to fathers they knew who took leave but spent the time renovating the house or going on hunting or fishing trips. However, traces of this position could be found in their own accounts as a period of building a garage while the grandparents looked after the baby, going on a family vacation, or introducing daycare during leave.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

4.1. Embracing Involved Fatherhood Across Educational Levels

In light of previous studies, it is somewhat surprising that the ideal of ‘involved, child-centered fatherhood’—meaning a period completely off from work and home alone with the child—is embraced across educational levels in our study. Our data revealed no signs that working-class fathers distanced themselves from fathers’ leave as a ‘middle-class project that did not suit them’, as Stefansen and Farstad (2010) describe in their study, nor were they forced to live more egalitarian lives than preferred, as shown in UK and US studies (Lyonette and Crompton 2015; Usdansky 2011). Instead, the ‘tidy trajectory model’ (fathers’ quota before daycare start) was taken for granted among fathers without higher education in ordinary working-class jobs. Further, the quota and the time alone to bond with the child while the mother returned to work were actually endorsed among these fathers.

In contrast to findings from the UK (Norman 2020), the partner’s attitudes and overall influence did not seem to explain the variation in the fathers’ practices discussed here. Most of the mothers typically returned to full-time work after using the shareable leave, regardless of educational level (see Appendix A Table A1). Among low-educated fathers, the mother’s return to full-time work or studies was taken for granted, even when the father paid a cost in terms of losing income, clients, or the job. In contrast, the fathers in competitive career jobs explained how their partner urged them to take more leave—without succeeding—even though they expressed and supported the gender-equal ideology.

In line with the findings of Shows and Gerstel (2009), the fathers without higher education in our study both practiced and emphasized the pleasures of private fathering, and in our study, they even endorsed gender egalitarian beliefs. Our findings could be interpreted as indications of the dispersion of the discourse of early father–child bonding and involved fatherhood into the everyday understanding of working-class fathers in Norway as predicted by the theory of diffusion of gender-egalitarian norms (Esping-Andersen and Billari 2015). A limitation to our study is that the fathers may have reported overly strong egalitarianism to live up to the norm. However, the detailed description of personal experiences of childcare and housework during ordinary leave days and the strong and unprompted emphasis on emotional bonding with the baby among the lower-educated fathers indicate lived—not only spoken—egalitarianism.

4.2. Substitutability Costs in Competitive Jobs

In contrast, the work-centered, highly educated fathers in competitive career jobs did not talk about time alone with the baby, nor did they emphasize the importance of the emotional father–child relationship. Instead, they argued that more coercion in terms of a longer and less flexible fathers’ quota is needed to force fathers like themselves to actually take leave and to equalize mothers’ and fathers’ career-related risks. These fathers and their partners resemble the ‘high socio-economic segment couples’ with strong spoken, but not lived, egalitarianism in Usdansky’s (2011) analysis. In the US, this incongruence is explained by scarce family policies combined with a lack of ethos of substitutability in professional occupations, meaning that one employee cannot substitute for another without incurring heavy costs to the employer through reduced productivity, thus justifying expectations of long work hours (Jacobs and Gerson 2004). However, our findings show neither lack of available policies nor absence of an ethos of substitutability as barriers to fathers’ leave and involved fatherhood among the fathers in competitive jobs but rather the short- and long-term costs of actually being substituted. In contrast to Jacobs and Gerson’s (2004) argument of substitution of professional employees incurring costs to the employer, among the fathers in competitive jobs in our study, the costs are attributed to themselves and their future careers.

Chaudhry et al. (2020) show how the interpretations of the policy of shared parental leave among UK academics are linked to the pressure between individual, organizational, and societal goals. In our study, the career fathers feared that the organization would manage the societal goal of statutory parental leave by giving their clients and projects to colleagues, with no guarantee of getting them back. Even though fathers in our study acknowledge that these risks also are real for mothers too, the fathers in competitive career jobs choose to take the ‘easy way out’ to secure their own careers.

Interestingly, we also found examples of how the logic of competition results in replaceability costs in low-educated jobs. Nevertheless, as the cases of Kjell and Geir show, there is also an important difference between competing for income and competing for a career. Competition for shifts, jobs, and contracts may also create replaceability costs in classic working-class jobs. However, these costs can be resolved by income replacement and thus allow for a child-oriented father’s practice even without formal paid parental leave. In contrast, competition for continuous responsibilities, positions, and clients in personal portfolio-oriented career jobs cannot be resolved by short-term income replacement. Despite receiving compensation above the state refund limit, the fathers in career jobs argue the need to avoid substitution to keep and develop their own position.

Therefore, there is reason to believe that the availability of non-transferable fathers’ leave can change work–family dynamics in many societal segments, including in the working class but not necessarily in highly competitive jobs where the individual career is at stake. Even though the fathers’ quota is state-imposed and non-transferable, the high-earning fathers in career jobs do not experience that taking leave is the same as being substituted from their job responsibilities to be the primary carer. This finding relates to the new institutional theory of how formal policies often fail to address the problems they were created to resolve when competing informal practices and narratives interfere (Galea et al. 2020). Our analysis shows how the main challenge is not the rationale of the formal policy (‘use-it-or-lose-it’ fathers’ leave) but that the coercive element of the non-transferable leave is still experienced as too weak in some segments and thus avoidable in practice.

4.3. The Ideal Irreplaceable Worker

Our findings also challenge the established understanding of the ideal worker norm, as a problem upheld by employers rewarding long hours and visible busyness as signs of productivity (Williams 2000). Even when employers endorse parental leave and only reward results, the costs of giving up projects, clients, and opportunities to produce results are still present in highly competitive professions. We contribute to the research field by expanding the concept of the ideal worker (Acker 2006) and the ideal portfolio worker (Neely 2020, 2022) with our exploration of fathers’ actual leave practices as a response to the degree of risks and costs of substitutability at work (see Goldin 2021), introducing the ideal of the irreplaceable worker (see also Halrynjo and Mangset 2024). In contrast to the prevailing understanding of the replacement problem as lack of substitutability/replaceability (Goldin 2021; Närvi and Salmi 2018; Samtleben et al. 2019), we show how the fear of becoming replaceable and the effort to remain irreplaceable may actually be an important part of the ideal irreplaceable worker norm and thus hinder fathers’ leave in career-oriented workplace dynamics based on individual competition. We argue that while substitution of workers may be key to enhancing family friendliness, substitution may also represent a threat to care-encumbered workers as long as unencumbered workers who can offer continuous availability to their personal portfolios of clients or projects are allowed to avoid being replaced by a substitute.

The fathers acknowledged that this risk applies to mothers as well, and the fathers in working-class jobs emphasized how mothers also need to secure their jobs and income. However, the flexibility of the parental leave policies (splitting the leave and using it for vacations together when the mother is not working or postponing the leave until the child starts daycare) allows career fathers in competitive jobs to continue to limit their childcare responsibilities to reduce their own career risk. In competitive markets, individual availability and time may also function as an individualized privilege, making it easier to win projects, clients, and positions compared to competitors with less time on their hands (Halrynjo and Mangset 2022). Consequently, the ideal worker norm is part of the problem but not only as a construct in the eyes of the employers. Rather, the ideal irreplaceable worker represents an inherent element of the logic of individualized competition for clients, projects, and responsibility upholding unequal conditions.

4.4. Implications, Limitations, and Further Research

According to our findings, the remaining deficiency of involved fatherhood and egalitarian leave practices in forefront societies like Norway does not have to be rooted in gender-traditional ideals or working-class preferences, nor in the lack of available family policies or absence of an ethos of substitutability among employers. Rather, it can be found in the anticipated individualized risks involved in becoming substituted at work. Fathers in the public sector or in collectively organized firms did not face this risk, regardless of educational level and occupation. However, the self-employed working-class fathers who did not find ways to limit their childcare responsibility ended up paying the costs themselves as they lost clients and projects.

In contrast, the highly educated fathers in career jobs avoided the substitutability risk by limiting childcare but admitted freely how this solution challenges their gender equality beliefs. To overcome this problem, the career fathers argued that for the future, longer state-imposed quotas and stronger compulsory policies are needed to level the playing field, making it impossible for fathers (as themselves) not to take their care responsibility to the same degree as mothers do. If all fathers took long dedicated leave—for real—and realized their ideal of involved fatherhood afterwards, the individual career risks would be reduced, leveling the playing field for all. Interestingly, this strong equality-oriented discourse displayed by the fathers in competitive jobs is not enough to put their conviction into practice, as the risk of individual substitutability costs is still avoidable to them.

Our data are from 2017, and the fathers in our study experienced a quota of 10–14 weeks, as the quota was reduced from 14 to 10 weeks in 2014. In 2018 the fathers’ quota was expanded again to 15 weeks. A prolonged fathers’ quota may have the potential to force fathers to share both the pleasures of emotional and practical bonding with their babies as well as some of the replaceability costs of substitution. While shorter leaves are easier to use in the form of vacation, etc., a paid parental leave policy reserving a minimum of 15–16 weeks for the father may change the norms and expectations of fathers’ absences from work and potentially be harder to avoid also in competitive occupations.

Newer data on Norwegian fathers’ attitudes from CORE Survey 2022 indicate that a large majority of fathers support a fathers’ quota of a minimum of 1/3 of the total paid parental leave (15 weeks) across educational levels; see Appendix A 

Table A2. Support for fathers’ quota.

Views on how much parental leave should be reserved for fathers, by level of education (Don’t know omitted)
	At least one third	Less than one third	No father quota
Primary/secondary level	67	15	18
Bachelor’s level	76	12	12
Master’s level	68	21	11
Views on how much parental leave should be reserved for fathers, by level of education (Don’t know included)
	At least one third	Less than one third	No father quota	Don’t know
Primary/secondary level	60	13	16	11
Bachelor’s level	71	11	11	7
Master’s level	66	21	10	3

Note: Men aged 25–55 years with at least one child below 20 years living in the household. CORE SURVEY 2022 https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3121173 (accessed on 20 December 2024).

. Further, analyses of time-use studies actually do not reveal the classic class differences in time spent with children in Norway (Ellingsæter et al. 2021), indicating that educational level may no longer be as important for understanding variations in involved parenthood.

In contrast, there may be more to learn from the investigation of the role of workplace dynamics. The mismatch between strong gender-equal attitudes and work-centered fathers’ leave practices was also found in a quantitative study among economists in Norway (Halrynjo and Fekjær 2020), in line with the qualitative accounts of the fathers in competitive career jobs in our study. Further research is needed to explore not only formal uptake and length but also actual leave and childcare practices across educational levels and different workplace dynamics. Specifically, there is a need to understand how work–family integration, and involved fatherhood, including long child-centered parental leave practices, can also be realized in parts of the labor market dominated by individualized competition for projects, clients, and responsibilities.