Book Reviews: Designing Parental Leave Policy: The Norway Model and the Changing Face of Fatherhood

Abstract

departure from the traditional breadwinner role of fatherhood to a modern evolution of involved fatherhood. Although we are yet to see such cultural change globally, parental leave has a distinctly high uptake by fathers in Norway (2). The increased participation of fathers in childcare has been attributed to a father’s quota of parental leave that was introduced in Norway, which provided a fifteen-week father-only leave entitlement (7). In Designing Parental Leave Policy, Brandth and Kvande explore the reasons underpinning its success and investigate the extent to which the father’s quota has provided a work-family balance for fathers, supported the development of father-child relationships and contributed towards a marked shift from hegemonic masculinity to caring masculinity. Brandth and Kvande primarily argue that the provision of an individual right to leave for fathers has altered the external and internal perception of fatherhood to include a caring role. The policy design of a father-only leave entitlement has generated the external societal expectation that fathers undertake care work. Additionally, many fathers who were home alone on leave had internally developed greater competency as carers and particularly acquired a need-oriented care practice where they could read their child in order to identify and meet their needs. Relying upon the data obtained from a series of interviews conducted with fathers in the 1980s before the introduction of the father’s quota, in the 1990s after its initial introduction as a 4-week entitlement and in the 2000s after being extended to a 10-week entitlement, Part 1 reveals the importance of the design of the father’s quota in increasing paternal involvement in childcare. Unlike shared parental leave which provided parents with the option to decide between themselves who could take leave in 16 or 26-week periods, fathers encountered a greater sense of entitlement to the father’s quota as the leave scheme was s