Narratives of Children’s Gender Socialization from Fathers Who Take Parental Leave in South Korea

Abstract

Do leave-taking fathers who 'undo' gender in their division of domestic labour and responsibilities also ‘undo’ gender in relation to their children’s gender socialization? This exploratory qualitative study seeks to understand how leave-taking fathers in South Korea (N = 17) experience and envision their children’s gender socialization by identifying three types of fathers. For ‘committed’ fathers, leave-taking is an extension of their genuine convictions and best efforts to raise children based on feminist ideals, but contradictory messages from non-parental influences such as preschools pose challenges. ‘Conflicted’ fathers undergo significant changes in their views about men and women’s roles through leave uptake but confess to still holding rigid views about children’s gender socialization. ‘Receptive’ fathers demonstrate more open and moderately flexible attitudes to children’s gender roles than the ‘conflicted’ fathers, although not as consciously, proactively, or consistently as the ‘committed’ fathers. The findings indicate that fathers’ uptake of leave leads to diverging, rather than uniform trajectories in fathers’ development of attitudes and behaviours toward children’s socialization. The findings point to the need to consider inconsistencies operating at multiple levels of the ‘gender trap,’ including between fathers’ attitudes toward adult and children’s gender roles, fathers’ behaviours and attitudes, and parental and non-parental influences.