Father Involvement in the Early Years

An International Comparison of Policy and Practice

Adler, Marina A., Lenz, Karl, Marina A. Adler, Karl Lenz

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781447318996
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447319030
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Fatherhood is in transition and being challenged by often contradictory forces: societal mandates to be both an active father and provider, men's own wish to be more involved with their children, and the institutional arrangements in which fathers work and live. This book explores these phenomena in the context of cross-national policies and their relation to the daily childcare practices of fathers. It presents the current state of knowledge on father involvement with young children in six countries from different welfare state regimes with unique policies related to parenting in general and fathers in particular: Finland, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the UK and the USA.

FIVE

The United Kingdom

Margaret O’Brien, Sara Connolly, Svetlana Speight, Matthew Aldrich and Eloise Poole

The cultural and policy context of fatherhood

The family and work policy context of fatherhood in the UK occupies a midway position between continental Europe’s social investment and solidarity model and the USA’s private, market-oriented model. There is cultural endorsement that the government and citizens should work together to ensure the welfare of families and children, particularly those deemed ‘deserving’, through taxation and voluntary action (Daly, 2010). It is notable that public spending on family benefits is 4% of gross domestic product (GDP), above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 2.6% of GDP (OECD, 2009). However, unlike its Nordic neighbours, the UK is more likely to spend in terms of child-related cash and tax transfers to parents than in public infrastructure, such as nurseries and centre-based facilities.

Historically, British contemporary family and work policies influencing fathers need to be set against two evolving societal processes and structures. First, the post-Second World War national welfare state provision of universal health and social security underpinned a male-breadwinner and female-homemaker division of family labour in a stable married family unit. Second, the inclusion (since 1973) in a pan-European governmental arrangement – first the European Economic Community (EEC) of six countries and now the European Union (EU) of 29 countries – has, despite its diversity, promoted female employment and work–family reconciliation policy measures in the UK. The politics and policies of both the UK and the EU have witnessed significant changes influencing families over the last 60 years (Lewis, 2009). However, two common features have been a move towards: (1) a mixed economy of welfare, incorporating private and public provisions, especially since the economic downturn of 2008; and (2) a dual-earner/dual-carer family model and increased parental separation and divorce, away from the strong male-breadwinner model (Lewis, 1992).

Like other countries across the world, Britain has been expanding programmes to promote the stronger engagement of men in family care activities throughout the life course. Part of the motivation has been to help modernise work–family policies and to catch up with the changing position of women. Today, fathers in Britain are expected to be accessible to and nurturing of, as well as economically supportive of, their children. They are more self-conscious about juggling the different characteristics of ‘the good father’, particularly in terms of how they manage conflicts between having a job and looking after the children (Dermott, 2008; Finn and Henwood, 2009). Caring fathers are now an integral part of overall culture through advertising images and media depictions of sporting icons. However, such changes are challenging to implement in everyday life in the context of combining the British neoliberal flexible labour market framework with the more holistic work–family reconciliation offered by the EU model. The global economic crisis since 2008 further unsettled economic conditions for British families, and men’s behaviour as fathers, partners and workers is affected by rising job insecurity and stagnant wages.

Leave provisions

The British legacy of the father-breadwinner/mother-homemaker model is, in part, responsible for the late arrival, by European standards, of statutory paternity leave in 2003 (Kamerman and Moss, 2009). It also explains why, despite cultural endorsements of active and nurturing fatherhood models since the 1980s (McKee and O’Brien, 1982), the UK has one of the longest maternity leave entitlements in the world – 52 weeks (Moss, 2014). This mother-focused employment policy has its origin in the original framing of the Labour government’s legislation in the Employment Protection Act of 1975. This law, which first introduced statutory maternity leave in the UK, adopted a model that combines a long leave of 40 weeks with a short period of payment of six weeks rather than the EEC ‘best practice’ model at the time of short leave of 12–14 weeks with full payment (Fonda, 1980). Subsequent UK governments of all political orientations have attempted to respond to the changing nature of work and family circumstances for fathers and mothers while juggling these contradictory national and pan-European policy pathways.

A focus on fathers has been part of, but not central to, work–family policy development in Britain. Interest in fathers has ebbed and flowed and cross-departmental policy initiatives have not always been integrated into a coherent framework. During the 1990s, across mainstream political parties, rhetoric stressed both the economic and caring responsibilities of fathers. This policy turn had its roots in the Labour Party’s first family policy Green Paper (Home Office, 1999: 26), which declared an intention ‘to extend choice for both mothers and fathers by giving them the chance to spend more time at home, as well as support their children financially’. The key government minister, Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Minister for Women, had a great interest in developing work–family policy that was father-inclusive (Hewitt, 2004). Similarly, since 2010, the recent Coalition government has continued to emphasise the parental sharing of family responsibilities and the balance of work and family commitments: ‘making it easier for parents to share caring responsibilities; giving families more choice and control’ (Children and Families Bill, 2013: 22). However, boosting maternal employment has received the most active policy attention, with less attention devoted to explicit policy measures to encourage paternal caring.

Nonetheless, there is a gradual enhancement of British fathers’ rights in the workplace and support to engage separated fathers in the lives of their children. Since April 2003, for the first time, British fathers have a legal right to take a two-week paid paternity leave after the birth of a child (Employment Act 20021), building on a three-month unpaid parental leave entitlement available since 1999. A new element to the employment legislation has been a provision to support flexible working hours (eg flexitime or a compressed work week) for fathers, as well as mothers, of children younger than six years of age or for parents of older disabled children. Subsequent legislation has extended fathers’ entitlements to both leave and flexible working hours. In April 2011, a new right to allow fathers to take up to six months Additional Paternity Leave (APL) during the child’s first year, if the mother returns to work before the end of her maternity leave, was introduced (HM Government, 2010). Fathers taking APL can be paid for a maximum of 19 weeks at the flat rate or 90% of their average earnings, whichever is the lower figure; such payment – the Additional Statutory Paternity Pay (ASPP) – is only available during the period that the mother would be entitled to payment for maternity leave (O’Brien et al, 2014).

In terms of separated and divorced fathers, an emphasis on ‘relationship support’ and mediation has developed over the decade. This policy approach contrasts with the 1990s’ discourse of ‘feckless’ or ‘deadbeat’ dads failing to financially support their children (Collier, 1995). For example, the Child Support Agency, formed in 1991, focused purely on economic and not caring fatherhood, narrowly concentrating on enforcing the financial maintenance of children after divorce. The language of more recent legislation has attempted to integrate the financial and care responsibilities of fathers and mothers, using terminology such as ‘co-operative parenting’ and ‘shared parental responsibility’ (Department for Education and Ministry of Justice, 2012; Department for Work and Pensions, 2012). This approach suggests that a cultural transition towards the family man ideals of ‘intimate fatherhood’ (Dermott, 2008) is gaining potency in family policy formulation.

Contextual demographic and family trends related to fatherhood

After providing information on the cultural and policy context in which British father involvement occurs, this section describes the relevant demographic trends, features of family structure and labour force participation (LFP) patterns that affect fathers. As seen in Table 5.1, crude marriage rates have continued to decline in the UK over the decade from 4.9 to 4.4, but have decreased at a slower rate than over previous decades. Divorce rates have also declined somewhat, from 2.6 to 2.1 (crude rates), as fewer people formally marry. In 2013, the average age at marriage (including remarriage) for women was 37.0 years, slightly younger than the male mean age of 38.6 years (ONS, 2013). However, the greatest number of men and women marry between ages 30 to 34; cohabitation tends to happen earlier in the life course, and for a growing number, is becoming an alternative to formal marriage. Marriage rates are higher for Asian British, who also have lower divorce rates. Same-sex marriage was legalised in 2013 by the Marriages (Same Sex Couples) Act. In the first year after legislation, there were more female than male marriages: of the 1,500 marriages between 29 March and 30 June 2014, 56% of marriages were female couples.

The growth in cohabitation mirrors wider European demographic trends: in EU countries, between 25% and 50% of all children are born outside marriage (European Commission, 2009). Although divorce rates are stabilising, divorce, the separation of consensual unions and re-partnering have changed the nature of fathers’ families. Fathers are now more likely than in previous generations to experience more than one family type (serial fathering), and in the process, fathers typically cease to reside with the children of their first relationship.

Table 5.1: Selected indicators related to parenting for the UK, circa 2000 and circa 2012

Marriage and partnership delay has, in turn, influenced childbearing. By 2012, 47.5% of births were to women in non-married unions. The age at first childbirth increased for British women from 28.5 in 2000 to 29.8 in 2012. Similarly, the mean age of all fathers at the birth of their first child has increased by nearly two years over the last two decades – from 31.1 years in 1993 to 32.9 in 2013 (ONS, 2013). Despite the trend to later onset of parenthood, the UK has one of the higher birth rates in Europe, reaching 1.9 Total Period Fertility Rate (TFR) in 2012, a rise from 1.6 in 2000, driven in part by higher birth rates for non-UK-born women (2.19 in 2012). Pakistan was the most common country of birth for non-UK-born fathers between the years of 2008 and 2013, followed by Poland and India (ONS, 2014).

Despite an increase in cohabiting-couple families over the past decade, married-couple families are still the most common family type in the UK, both with and without dependent children, forming more than 69% of family households (see Table 5.1). British Asian fathers are more likely to live in married-couple households with dependent children than either white or British Afro-Caribbean fathers. The proportion of children living in lone-mother households has increased from 13% in 2001 to 14% in 2010, and is more common for Afro-Caribbean British. While the proportion of lone-father households has remained stable, at 2.1%, there has been some growth (1.3% to 2.6%) for households with young children throughout this period.

There are two important recent trends in UK LFP: delayed entry to the labour market for both men and women due to increasing enrolment in higher education and a continued growth in female, mostly part-time, employment. By 2011, women’s LFP had stabilised at 64%, though the participation rate and hours worked by mothers, especially those with young children, was lower. At the same time, men’s LFP has declined from 77% to 74%. The LFP of fathers with young children is higher than that of men in general (86% versus 74%) and, overall, when full-time workers are compared, fathers work slightly more hours than men in general. However, average hours for both fathers and men in general have fallen over the past decade; between 2000 and 2011, for fathers average hours have fallen from 45.4 to 44.7 and for no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: Marina A. Adler and Karl Lenz
• One: Finland: Jouko Huttunen and Petteri Eerola
• Two: Germany: Marina A. Adler, Karl Lenz and Yve Stöbel-Richter
• Three: Italy: Elisabetta Ruspini and Maria Letizia Tanturri
• Four: Slovenia: Nada Stropnik and Živa Humer
• Five: The United Kingdom: Margaret O’Brien, Sara Connolly, Svetlana Speight, Matthew Aldrich and Eloise Poole
• Six: The United States: Marina A. Adler
• Conclusion: Comparative father involvement: the dynamics of gender culture, policy and practice: Marina A. Adler and Karl Lenz