Balancing the Scales: Negotiating Father's Parental Leave Use

Studying couples who shared parental leave presents the opportunity to explore decision-making processes that may challenge conventional care arrangement typical of early parenthood. Interviews with 33 Canadian heterosexual couples indicate gendered sticking points in the division of official leave time. Whether fathers took leave because of their personal desires or material circumstances, this study finds that men and women did not enter negotiations on a level playing field. Strong cultural support for mothers'-but not fathers'-time with baby tipped the scales toward maternal care giving, even when couples wanted to share parental leave. Nevertheless, financial considerations such as a man's topped-up pay or woman's career could lessen the weight of mothers' moral entitlement to the leave time by presenting couples with an alternative logic on which to base their decision making.