Which fathers are involved in looking after their children? Identifying the conditions associated with paternal involvement

经济和政治生活中长期存在的性别不平等的根本原因之一是，妇女在家庭领域承担着更重的工作量，她们仍然承担着照顾儿童和其他家庭成员的大部分工作。在过去的40年里，妇女的就业参与率有所上升，但男子在育儿和家务方面的贡献增长较慢。森(1992)的“能力框架”详细阐述了国家和组织政策、社会规范以及家庭经济和人口环境如何塑造男性和女性的选择、决定和行为。这一框架表明，有许多社会、经济、人口和文化因素对家庭内部分工的安排施加了逻辑压力。然而，这些因素在塑造男性参与育儿方面的相对重要性仍未得到充分研究，主要是基于小规模的定性研究或横断面调查数据(Norman 2010；也见O‘Brien 2005)。我们早期的研究(Norman 2010；Norman et al 2014；Norman and Elliot 2015)使用千年队列研究(MCS)来开发在孩子9个月和3岁时父亲参与育儿的衡量标准。我们发现，母亲的工作时间与父亲的参与有最强的关联：如果母亲在孩子出生后九个月和三年都全职工作，那么当孩子三岁时，父亲更有可能是一名全职父母。父亲在孩子三岁时也更有可能参与其中，如果(I)他们工作时间较短，(Ii)如果他们在孩子出生后九个月参与育儿工作；但这两个变量的影响都明显弱于母亲的工作时间。这项研究项目将在这一分析的基础上，使用MCS，开发更多的父亲参与育儿的衡量标准，以确定随着孩子从9个月到11岁的年龄，哪些就业和社会人口特征影响父亲的参与。部分分析将侧重于完好无损的家庭，以消除关系破裂带来的令人困惑的影响。我们还将分析父亲参与与家庭完好率之间的关系，因为先前的研究发现父亲参与与夫妻关系质量之间存在相关性(例如普尔等人)。要解决的研究问题是：1.随着孩子的发育，我们如何制定父亲参与的衡量标准？2.在英国，父亲在孩子9个月、3个月、5岁、7岁和11岁时参与育儿行为的关键职业、社会人口学和态度特征是什么？3.父亲参与孩子生命周期的轨迹是否在父亲之间有所不同？如果是，预测因素是什么？4.当孩子9个月大时，父亲参与是否预示着一个家庭在11岁时是否仍然完整？在研究这些问题时，该项目旨在促进学术和政策辩论，讨论是什么鼓励或阻碍父亲参与照料他们的孩子。它将通过使用具有代表性的父亲样本来制定父亲参与的衡量标准，识别父亲之间的差异，并探索他们的参与如何随着孩子的长大而发展，从而对有关父母参与的文献做出原创性的贡献。这一点特别重要，因为在整个欧洲(如2013年欧洲联盟)的工作-家庭问题的政策辩论中对父亲的关注日益增加，包括英国的政策，在英国，引入共享育儿假是旨在为父亲及其参与育儿提供更好支持的最新改革(BIS 2014)。

One of the root causes of persistent gender inequalities in economic and political life is that women carry a heavier workload in the domestic domain where they still do most of the work involved in looking after children and other family members. Women's engagement in employment has risen over the last four decades but men's contribution to childcare and housework has grown more slowly. Sen's (1992) 'capability framework' elaborates how state and organisational policies, social norms, and household economic and demographic circumstances shape men and women's options, decisions and behaviours. This framework suggests there are many social, economic, demographic and cultural factors, which exert logistic pressures on the arrangement of the domestic division of labour in households. Yet the relative importance of these factors in shaping men's involvement in childcare remains under-researched and largely based on small-scale qualitative studies or cross-sectional survey data (Norman 2010; also see O'Brien 2005). Our earlier research (Norman 2010; Norman et al 2014; Norman and Elliot 2015) used the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to develop measures of paternal involvement in childcare when the child was aged nine months and three years old. We found the mothers' employment hours had the strongest association with paternal involvement: if the mother worked full-time both nine months and three years after the child's birth then the father was more likely to be an involved parent when the child was aged three. Fathers were also more likely to be involved when the child was aged three if (i) they worked shorter hours in employment and (ii) if they were involved in childcare nine months after the child's birth; but the effect of both these variables was significantly weaker than that of the mothers' employment hours. This research project will build on this analysis, using the MCS, by developing more measures of paternal involvement in childcare to establish which employment and socio-demographic characteristics shape paternal involvement as children age from nine months to eleven years old. Part of the analysis will focus on intact households to remove the confounding impact of relationship breakdown. We will also analyse the relationship between paternal involvement and the probability of households remaining intact given previous research has found a correlation between paternal involvement and the quality of a couple relationship (e.g. Poole et al. 2014).The research questions to be addressed are:1. How can we develop measures of paternal involvement over time as the child develops?2. What are the key employment, socio-demographic, and attitudinal characteristics of fathers in the UK who report involved parenting behaviour when their child is aged 9 months, 3, 5, 7 and 11 years old?3. Do trajectories of paternal involvement over the child's lifecourse vary between fathers and if so, what are the predictors?4. Does paternal involvement when the child is aged nine months predict whether a household is still intact when the child reaches age eleven?In examining these questions, the project aims to contribute to scholarly and policy debates about what encourages or impedes fathers' involvement in providing care for their children. It will make an original contribution to the literature on parental involvement by using a representative sample of fathers to develop measures of paternal involvement, identify differences among fathers and explore how their involvement develops as the child grows older. This is particularly relevant in light of the growing attention to fathers within policy debates about work-family issues across Europe (e.g. European Union 2013), including UK policy, where the introduction of shared parental leave is the most recent reform designed to provide better support for fathers and their involvement in childcare (BIS 2014).