Masculinity and Childcare

Abstract

This chapter focuses on fathers who took parental leave before they were granted earmarked rights. Fathers taking parental leave were rare at that time. The chapter explores how they include caregiving in their construction of masculinity. Using an interactionist perspective, viewing mothers and fathers as negotiating their caregiving roles, we find that fathers assert masculine identity by using several strategies. One of them is shaping their form of care-work differently from mothers' interaction with the child. Another is defining caregiving as an extension of the “masculine sphere” of the outdoors. Both mothers and fathers, however, take part in the process of reproducing masculinity as normative by giving masculine care higher status than women’s care work. Care-giving activities are adopted by the hegemonic form of masculinity with its strong connection to paid work.