My thoughts and reflections after reading the end of award report for this study, which compared and contrasted fathers' patterns of paid employment with those of non-fathers.
- In both the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the National Child Development Survey (NCDS), fathers worked more than non-fathers. As the BHPS covers all ages but the NCDS is a cohort study, the latter is more relevant, and unless otherwise indicated, it's NCDS stats that I'll be discussing. In the latter, fathers worked an avg of 42.9 hours per week, while non-fathers worked 42. (I presume these stats only include men with jobs.)
- In terms of long hours culture, fathers were more likely than non-fathers to work more than 48 hours per week: 20.7% of fathers did so, cf 18% of non.
- We can instantly guess why fathers work longer hours: to provide for their family. And as David Mellor implies, fathers also have an obligation to sacrifice themselves for the future public weal. Writing about globalisation soon after David Cameron announced that he was taking his two-weeks parternity leave, Mellor said: "Dave Cameron should be thinking about what kind of job his son might have in 20 years' time. How many will there still be left? Far better if Dave had denounced paternity leave as the escapist nonsense that it is." So in a state with liberal, business-friendly employment policies, parents are more likely to choose a FT + SAHP employment model, or an FT + PT. And with increased dependency on the lone FT salary and career development, longer hours are more likely. When the But in states with more family-friendly employment laws, are fathers likely to increase their hours in comparison to non-fathers?
- This study showed no evidence that fathers were more likely than non-fathers to opt for flexible forms of working - but cautions that as the numbers involved in such practices are so small, nothing reliable can be inferred.
- Lone dads who who worked tended to work longer hours than those who lived with a partner. To me, this looks like it may present (strong?) evidence that fathers are seeing themselves first as providers, and only second as carers. Among lone dads who work, part-time working is almost as low as for partnered men. Does this say more about men or about the nature of employment in the UK? Probably the former, but with a good deal of the latter. However, the study notes that "a much higher % are not in employment at all". I'm not sure if this "much higher" is in cf to lone dads who work, or lone dads who work PT.
- In reference to the above bullet point, it would be interesting to look at the hours worked by Black lone mums. I say this because, in contrast to white lone mums, who seem on the whole to define themselves first as carers and second if at all as workers, Black lone mums seem to see themselves more as carers and workers. I wonder if maybe Black lone mums self-define closer to how lone dads do than to how white lone mums do. This would possibly be interesting thing to look into for dissertation - ie a thorough disaggregation of lone parenthood, to see if gender is actually the key variable, or if others, eg race, might be more important.
- On the above point, Jane Lewis and others have written on how states define lone mums: as workers first or as mothers first, and how in some states, eg the UK, that has changed and even changed again over time. It would be interesting to look at how lone parents define themselves - something of course that Duncan and Edwards and others do.
- The main conclusion of this report was that fatherhood status is not a good predictor of hours worked and that once other factors were accounted for, it is insignificant. However, the authors seem to conclude that this says far more about men than about the employment climate - but i'm not so sure about that. If men could drop down to 30 hours a week for the first several years of their kids' lives, with no ill effect on their careers, would many more not do it?
- Men's hours of work are positively correlated with their partners', which I think is indicative of the rising dual earner/no earner split - which, along with the rise of the non-unionised service sector economies, is probably the biggest issue out there, I think.
- This correlation goes futher than we might think: men who work very long hours are more likely to have partners who work FT than to have partners who work PT or not at all.
- The authors found that only about 1/4 of men wanted to reduce their hours, 1% wanted to increase them, and the rest wanted to continue with their current hours. These figures helf for fathers and non-fathers. The authors conclude from this that fathers don't want to work less, but isn't it as least as likely that fathers/men are making these hour choice judgements not in a vacuum, but in the real world - ie one in which working fewer hours means making less money and damaging your career?
- Authors say that their results support previous research indicating that satisfaction with work-life balance only drops significantly when fathers work extremely long hours.
- The authors found that fathers' hours did drop a bit right after the birth of a child, but that this drop was not maintained through the child's "years of dependency". Not surprisingly, men whose partners were not working were significantly less likely to decrease their own hours after a birth, and were actually more likely to increase them.
- The authors conclude that fathers do not have shorter working hours than non-fathers, "nor do they find this problematic". I am unconvinced that this methodology really investigated this last bit.
- Apparently, no significant sub-group of fathers, including mc professionals, is adopting a "female model" of work-family balance. "Men's engagement with the labour market exists largely irrespective of their fatherhood status." Could this indicate that in the current policy enviornment, fatherhood is not the over-riding variable, but that employment policy is? If the latter were to change, would the former then follow suit? Is there evidence from other countries?
- The authors conclude that while some women are becoming more like men in terms of paid/unpaid employment, men do not appear to be becoming very much like women, at least in employment/career terms. "Fatherhood has changed, but it has not become motherhood and does not provide the backdoor route to gender equality." Pity Fraser (1994), who argued that the only true path to gender equality will be for men to become more like women.
- "Mothers and fathers... construct each other."
- It's important to note that parenthood occurs at probably the key time for career development. Would be nice to have a different approach to the lifecourse, wrt interweaving parenting and career.
- There is evidence from other research that men find ways to be involved in family life that do not conflict with being first and foremost a provider - eg taking the kids to the zoo on the weekends.
- Authors seem to ignore the elephant in the room, which is the set of career and financial constraints compelling men to not reduce their hours or slow down during fatherhood. Ignoring or not questioning this elephant, the authors write: "If the objective of paternal and paternity leave schemes is to advance more equitable gender relations in employment and domestic life, as mentioned in some EU literature on family policy, then these forms of intervention are unlikely to be sufficient." I really don't think they've learned enough about men's preferences to be able to say this. They appear to be implying that men don't really want paternity leave or reduced hours, as opposed to the more realistic scenario of not taking it because it will hurt your career.
- Perhaps we have a situation here where the role of the male breadwinner/provider is so much a part of male socialisation, and so embedded in employment norms, that we aren't really able to fully question it yet - much in the same way that 50 years ago, norms for female lifecourse choices were so restrictive that most women - and commentators - weren't yet able to fully question the set-up. Perhaps the current assumptions are for men what the Beverdige era assumptions were for women: seemingly carved in stone, but, in truth, about to change significantly. That's probably not the case, though, becuase women had a lot of very tangible stuff to gain from becoming more like men (and govts had a lot to gain from this as well), whereas the gains men can make from becoming more like women are mostly emotional and intangible (at least in cf to income), and would actually involve a loss of male power and prestige. In social policy, we should always look for incentives, and in this area, I think that while there were v strong incentives for women to become more like men, the incentives for men to become more like women are much weaker.