Attitudes to the gender division of labor and the transition to fatherhood

Abstract

Most European countries, including Sweden, have witnessed considerable postponement of first births over the past several decades, and societal gender equality has been mentioned among the central reasons for the delay in childbearing. Continued postponement of parenthood over the life course can result in “final childlessness,” i.e. the individual will reach the end of his/her reproductive period without having become a parent. As levels of final childlessness have been increasing in most European countries, studies of childlessness have become more common. However, most of these studies deal exclusively with women, and the theorizing regarding what leads to final childlessness, particularly among men, is clearly underdeveloped. In this paper we will contribute to this research area by investigating the long-term relationships between attitudes toward domestic gender equality and men’s transition to parenthood in Sweden. Our dependent variable is a close approximation of “final childlessness.” We use Swedish panel survey data on attitudes to the gender division of labor among still childless young adults aged 22–30 in 1999, combined with register data on births in the period 1999–2012. The article shows that the initial delay in becoming fathers evidenced by more egalitarian men is not made up in the long term.