Auswirkungen Der Familiengründung Auf Den Berufsverlauf Von Männern

In this article we use longitudinal data from the German socio-economic Panel to examine the relationship between parenthood and labour market outcomes for men. Both traditional sociological and economical perspectives predict a positive effect of fatherhood on wages, whereas the spreading idea of a modern fatherhood suggests that, at least, fathers of the younger generation tend to reduce their working hours and thus accept wage reductions. Our focus is on the effect of fatherhood on wage growth, hours worked and interfirm mobility. We find that fathers receive higher wages than married men without children, even when controlling for selection into fatherhood. The positive income effect of fatherhood results from greater on-the-job wage growth. However, fathers are not likely to increase their wage by working longer hours or leaving their current employer for a better paid position.     

Fathering attitudes and behaviors among low-income fathers

ABSTRACT

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a fatherhood intervention designed to improve the fathering attitudes and behaviors of fathers who are low income from metropolitan and rural communities in Louisiana. The study was successful in recruiting a sample of predominantly African American fathers (N = 57) and retaining the participants over time. An adequate number of fathers achieved the intervention goals to obtain employment, increase their earnings, and complete educational (i.e., Graduate Equivalency Diploma [GED]) training. In addition, after having completed the program, there was a statistically significant improvement in fathers’ relationship with the mothers of their children. Additionally, there were increases in fathers’ positive attitudes about being a father, perceived closeness with their children, amount of contact with their children, and satisfaction with the amount of time spent with their children; however, none of these differences were statistically significant. Most of the fathers gave favorable reports regarding the fatherhood program’s goals and delivery.     

Changing Fatherhood: An Exploratory Qualitative Study with African and African Caribbean Men in England

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study undertaken with 46 African and African Caribbean men exploring their experiences of fatherhood. Data analysis was informed by Connell’s theoretical work on changing gender relations. Findings indicate that fathers’ lives were mediated by masculinities, racism, gender, migration and generational changes in parenting. Fathers advocated a style of parenting centred on good communication with children. The implications of findings for theory, future research and health and social care policy regarding both children’s well‐being and the inclusion of fathers by health and social care practitioners are discussed.     

The impact of employment on fatherhood across family generations in white British,Polish and Irish origin families

This paper draws on data from an intergenerational study of fatherhood to consider how fatherhood has changed and how employment conditions and occupational status shape fatherhood, particularly their involvement with their children and, via an analysis of four cases, continuities and discontinuities are identified across the family generations. The study involved three generational chains of men which included grandfathers, sons and grandsons from three ‘ethnicities’; those of white British origin, Polish origin and Irish origin. While most agreed that fatherhood had changed, in particular the way fathers communicate and express affection to their children, other changes were also seen as important – increased material consumption, changes in children's lives and child-focused parenting. On the other hand, employment commitment and working conditions continue to constrain men's involvement with their children in both generations. A different pattern was also evident among a minority of the fathers who modified their employment to take on some childcare responsibilities, while a handful in low-status jobs had wives who were the main earners in the household, a situation that enabled them to take on a significant role in childcare.     

Intergenerational correlation of labor market outcomes

This paper contributes to the relatively limited literature on the correlation of labor market outcomes of parents and their children. This literature is relevant to the larger literature on intergenerational income mobility since correlation in intergenerational labor market outcomes is one of the potential factors contributing to the intergenerational correlation of permanent incomes. In this paper, we consider the time spent in unemployment by both sons and daughters, while accounting for the potential endogeneity of education. Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia data, we find evidence of a positive correlation of labor market outcomes between fathers and sons and, to a lesser extent, between mothers and daughters. In addition, the results reveal a significant relationship between parents’ and children’s education levels, indicating that there is an indirect association of parental education with their children’s labor market outcomes through education.     

DIFFERENT CLASSES,DIFFERENT FATHERS?

This paper discusses how social class and different economic conditions influence men's parenting. The paper is based on a qualitative study of 30 Swedish couples who live together with their biological children. The study shows that, despite the generosity of the Swedish welfare state and family subsidies, both internal and external economic conditions affect the way men construct their fatherhood. This was shown most clearly in the couples’ discussions around parental leave where parents under economic pressure often distributed the leave in a gender-traditional way. It was also apparent how traditional class patterns and structures still have a strong influence on today's parenthood. Fathers in working-class households often saw fatherhood as creating meaning in their lives and saw the process of becoming a parent as an explicit aspiration to establish something ‘natural’, well known and predictable. Fathers in middle-class households, on the other hand, considered fatherhood as something new, a reflexive project or an opportunity to develop their identity and to get to know new sides of themselves. In practice, these different ways of creating meaning in fatherhood are illustrated by the finding that working-class fathers tend to take up fewer parental leave days and uphold more traditional patterns of family life than fathers in middle-class households.     

The effects of teenage fatherhood on young adult outcomes

This paper uses national longitudinal data and several new empirical strategies to examine the consequences of teenage fatherhood. The key contribution is to compare economic outcomes of young fathers to young men whose partners experienced a miscarriage rather than a live birth. The results suggest that teenage fatherhood decreases years of schooling and the likelihood of receiving a high school diploma and increases general educational development receipt. Teenage fatherhood also appears to increase early marriage and cohabitation, and has mixed short-term effects on several labor market outcomes.     

Union Formation Among Men in the U.S.: Does Having Prior Children Matter?

Our study investigates whether fatherhood, and specifically involvement with nonresident children, influence men's entrance into marital and cohabiting unions. Using the National Survey of Families and Households, our findings suggest that neither resident nor nonresident children affect men's chances of entering a new marriage, but nonresident children have a positive effect on cohabitation. The positive association between nonresident children and men's union formation is not uniform; instead, we find that it is involvement with nonresident children, specifically visitation, that enhances men's chances of forming new unions. Whereas women's obligations to children from prior unions represent a resource drain that lowers their chances of union formation, our analysis suggests that involved nonresident fathers are more likely to enter subsequent unions than other men.     

Does Fatherhood Matter for Men?

Ignored in the flurry of new research on fathers is that fatherhood may have consequences for men. This article explores possible effects on the lives and well‐being of men for a range of fatherhood experiences. Data are drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households. The first part of this article examines whether men's varied associations with children (no children, coresident, non‐coresident, and stepfatherhood) are associated with men's psychological health and behavior, social connections, intergenerational family relations, and work behavior. We found strong evidence that fathers differ from nonfathers in their social connections, family relationships, and work behavior. There is significant variation in effects among the father types as well. The second section of this article focuses attention only on men who are fathers and examines whether fathering behavior (e.g., the amount of time and nature of the activities that fathers are reported to be spending with their children) is associated with men's well‐being. The effects of father involvement on men was found to be most significant for those who were living with their own children.     

Downward spiral: The impact of out-of-home placement on paternal welfare dependency

In this article, we test how out-of-home placement affects men's labor market attachment, and in so doing we provide a novel parallel to existing research on how fatherhood affects men, which focuses almost exclusively on a child's arrival. Using population panel data from Denmark that include all first time fathers whose children were placed in out-of-home care from 1995 to 2005, we find that having a child placed in care is associated with up to a 4 percentage point increase in welfare dependency. Having a child placed in out-of-home care appear to aggravate conditions that likely necessitated the out-of-home placement to begin with, thereby likely necessitating longer duration of out-of-home placements. Thus, out-of-home placements have substantial secondary costs for parents and society.     

Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood,Organization and Home‐Working

In the modern western world, the discursive construction of fatherhood and everyday fathering practices has been underpinned by the spatial separation of work from home, of public from private. However, increasing numbers of employees are now working from home and a disproportionate number of these are men with young children. This article draws on new empirical research to examine the implications for fathers and for organizations as home‐working disrupts earlier spatial configurations of fatherhood and fathering practices. The article concludes that as the spatial boundaries between home and work collapse, new accommodations between fatherhood/fathering and organization are emerging. However, these are underpinned by a traditional gender division of labour in the household. More broadly, these findings confirm the inadequacy of static distinctions between public and private, showing that while such distinctions are still used to mark space and time, this is relational, contingent and unstable.     

Fathers' employment in a father-friendly welfare state: does fatherhood affect men's working hours?

An important aim of Norwegian work–family policies is to enhance the family role of fathers. Time-use surveys show a slight increase in fathers’ family work, but we still know little about the relationship between men's family circumstances and working hours. On the one hand, policy measures encourage the greater involvement of fathers in family life. On the other hand, men are the main providers in most couples and employment and breadwinning are still important components of men's fathering identity. In this paper, we examine the relationship between fatherhood and working time, with a particular focus on the possible effects of the number and ages of children. Utilizing the Norwegian Labour Force Survey 2005, we find that men's contractual working hours are not significantly affected by their parental status, but men do curtail their actual working hours when they have young children, and particularly if there is only one child in the household. However, men with school-aged children actually work longer hours than non-fathers and men with young children.     

'Estrogen-filled worlds': fathers as primary caregivers and embodiment

Within the wide body of scholarship on gender work and caring, sub‐strands of research have grown tremendously in the past decade, including largely separate studies on fatherhood and embodiment. Drawing on a qualitative research project with Canadian fathers who self‐identify as primary caregivers of their children, this article focuses on recovering largely invisible links between theoretical and empirical understandings of fatherhood, caring and embodiment. The article builds on the work of key sociologists of the body as well as the work of Goffman and Merleau‐Ponty. Specifically, Merleau‐Ponty's concept of ‘body subjects’ and Goffman's work on the ‘moral’ quality of bodily movements through public spaces are utilized as lenses for understanding fathers' narratives of caring, particularly how men speak about their movements with children through what several fathers refer to as “estrogen‐filled” worlds. As caring for others involves forming social networks and relations, embodiment can matter in the spaces between men, between male and female caregivers, and between men and the children of others. This article argues that through the changing stages of caring for children, male embodiment constantly shifts in the weight of its salience in the identities and practices of fathers and caregiving.     

Scholarship on Fatherhood in the 1990s and Beyond

Throughout the 1990s, scholars interested in fatherhood have generated a voluminous, rich, and diverse body of work. We selectively review this literature with an eye toward prominent theoretical, methodological, and substantive issues. This burgeoning literature, complemented by social policy makers' heightened interest in fathers and families, focuses on fatherhood in at least 4 key ways. First, theorists have studied fatherhood as a cultural representation that is expressed through different sociocultural processes and embedded in a larger ecological context. Second, researchers have conceptualized and examined the diverse forms of fatherhood and father involvement. Third, attempts have been made to identify the linkages between dimensions of the father‐child relationship and developmental outcomes among children and fathers. Fourth, scholars have explored the father identity as part of a reciprocal process negotiated by men, children, mothers, and other interested parties. Our review highlights research that examines the relationships between dimensions of the father‐child relationship and children's well‐being and development. We conclude by discussing promising avenues of scholarship for the next generation of research on fatherhood.     

Die Vereinbarkeitsfrage für Männer: Welche Auswirkungen haben Elternzeiten und Teilzeitarbeit auf die Stundenlöhne von Vätern?Work-family reconciliation for men: Do parental leave and part-time work affect fathers’ hourly wages?

As previous research shows, many German fathers would like to spend more time with their children, but long working hours often restrict their opportunities to do so. Parental leave and part-time work could help fathers to reconcile work and family. Yet, labor market theories predict that using such family-friendly policies may lead to wage penalties. Hence, many fathers decide against using such policies because they fear that parental leave or part-time work will lead to financial penalties and career disadvantages. This article evaluates this concern by empirically examining the effect of parental leave and part-time work on fathers’ hourly wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1991–2013 and Families in Germany (FiD) 2010–2013, results from fixed-effects regression analyses show that part-time work is associated with wage penalties, but parental leave is not – irrespective of whether fathers only took the two months fathers’ quota or longer parental leaves. The results hence indicate that the German parental leave legislation enables fathers to spend more time with their children while protecting them from wage penalties at work.     

Unemployment and Fatherhood: Gender,Culture and National Context

Hegemonic representations of masculinity and dominant images of fatherhood have usually been linked to the domain of work. This article explores the experiences of men under the hardship of unemployment and the impact of these experiences on the construction of their gender identities, specifically on the construction of their fatherhood identity. In addition, the article examines how culture and national context affect the interrelationship between unemployment and fatherhood. Drawing on a post‐structural constructivist theoretical perspective, the article describes a qualitative study of low‐income unemployed Palestinian fathers in Israel. The study examines three areas of interest: perceptions of fatherhood, the experience of unemployment and the impact of unemployment on the construction of fatherhood. On the theoretical level, the article proposes a conceptualization of the relationship between unemployment and fatherhood. It argues that in order to generalize the impact of unemployment on fatherhood, we must first examine the context in which gendered and cultural perceptions of fatherhood are embedded. On a policy level, the article offers some recommendations for developing more contextualized, gender‐ and cultural‐sensitive policies for unemployed fathers.     

Gender,Productivity, and the Marital Wage Premium

Explanations for married men’s wage premium often emphasize greater market productivity due to a gendered division of household labor, though this “specialization thesis” has been insufficiently interrogated. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 972), this paper examines the relationship between wages and time spent in paid labor and housework for married women and men with high levels of labor force attachment and their spouses. Scrutiny of couples’ time use finds strong evidence for the gendered division of labor, but little support for the anticipated wage effects of the specialization thesis itself. Less strict sample restrictions point to the need for continued research directed at couples’ joint employment and household labor decisions.     

EXPLORING FATHERHOOD: MASCULINITY AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN THE RESEARCH PROCESS

Exploring issues of fatherhood with men raises important questions about how identities are produced in the research process, and particularly about the part played by gender when both researcher and ‘researched’ are men. The article draws on the author's recent research with British fathers and makes extensive use of an individual case study, to suggest ways in which defensive and intersubjective processes interact in the production of one man's narrative of fatherhood and in the process of interpretation and analysis. The article's conclusions have implications both for researching masculinity and for working with men.     

Young Fatherhood and Subsequent Disadvantage in the United Kingdom

Although there has been increasing attention to the importance of fathers and their relationships with their children, few studies have examined young parenthood and its consequences for fathers’ life chances. In recent years, this has begun to change, and research is examining, to a far greater extent, the experiences of young fathers. Using data from a cohort of British men born in 1970, this paper uses a propensity score–matching technique to compare the well‐being of 344 men who reported becoming fathers before the age of 22 with men from similar backgrounds who did not. The findings suggest that selection into young fatherhood is substantial but, for some outcomes, significant differences remain.     

Quite an encumbrance? Work-related obstacles to Finnish fathers’ take-up of parental leave

ABSTRACT

An ideal of involved fatherhood has become popular in the developed countries, but even countries like Finland that have introduced an individual father’s quota to parental leave are far from gender equality in parents’ leave practices. Lack of support and negative attitudes at workplaces or pressure at work are among the obstacles to fathers’ leave take-up. The study used survey data from fathers and interviews at workplaces to explore the role of work and workplaces among the many aspects related to fathers’ possibilities of taking leave. The results showed that fathers’ income and workplace characteristics were associated with taking leave. Few fathers mentioned employers’ objection as a hinder. Father’s recent unemployment and anticipated difficulty of taking a long time off played a more important role. At workplaces, the obstacles to taking long leave were related to fathers’ ideals about a committed worker and to the nature and organizing of work. Additionally, the leave exceeding fathers’ quota might not be understood as ‘for fathers’. The spouse’s situation and fathers’ gendered perceptions about parental responsibilities were also important for leave practices. The findings suggest that policy development towards a longer father’s quota could make fathers’ care responsibilities visible also at workplaces.