What happens to the couple relationship when sharing parental leave? A prospective, longitudinal study.

Abstract

Family relationships are partly influenced by contextual features of the social environment, such as social policy systems and the extent of paid parental leave (Koslowski, Blum, Dobrotic, Macht & Moss, 2019). The mutual transactions between external factors and internal processes in family life are likely to affect the quality of the couple relationship, as emphasized in Bronfenbrenner’s (2001) bioecological model of human development. This theoretical framework describes how family processes are influenced by environmental events and that transitions occur throughout the life span and serve as trajectories for developmental change (Bronfenbrenner, 2001). The model addresses multiple factors that can facilitate the understanding of how parents’ decisions on parental leave influences both parents’ involvement in caregiving through reciprocal transactions between the societal and the individual levels, which might affect parents’ interaction and their relationship as a couple. The present study examines parents’ perceived couple relationship quality and how it is influenced by division of parental leave, in a sample of 280 Swedish parents who filled out questionnaires at 6 and 18 months after their child was born. We also examined whether parenting stress or coparenting quality had any bearing on the association between division of parental leave and couple relationship quality. The study contributes new knowledge on how parents of young children perceive their couple relationship in the context of equal division of parental leave, building on our previous studies in which other outcomes were measured. Parental leave in Sweden Sweden has a history of implemented welfare reforms to promote gender equality (Olah & Bernhardt, 2008) and is highly ranked internationally in terms of gender equality (World Economic Forum, 2020). Parental leave rights for both mothers and fathers are regulated in the gender‐neutral Parental Leave Act (SFS, 1995), and fathers have been afforded the same rights as mothers since 1974. Government policy encourages parents to share their parental leave equally, and the parental leave system is designed to stimulate a dual‐earner model (Haas & Hwang, 2012). Fathers’ total use of benefit days has slowly grown since the introduction of the gender‐neutral parental leave system in 1974, and today accounts for approximately 29% of the 480 benefit days afforded the couple for each child (Forsakringskassan, 2019). After a third so called “daddy month” was introduced in 2016, 90 days are today reserved for each parent, and most fathers, 88%, take some parental leave during their child’s first seven years, generally starting 13 to 15 months after childbirth (Duvander & Lofgren, 2019). Still, the proportion of parents who divide parental benefit days equally (each parent taking at least 40% of the leave) remains a low 18% (Forsakringskassan, 2019). This study was conducted between 2011 and 2013, before the third daddy month was added. During the study time period, each parent received 60 days, respectively, while the remaining days could be split however the parents wanted.