Fathers’ uptake of parental leave : Forerunners and laggards in Sweden, 1993-2010

Sweden is often considered a forerunner in family change and developments towardsless gendered family production patterns. In this study, we focus on recent developmentstowards more gender-equal sharing of parental leave in Sweden. We explore how fathers’use of parental leave has changed over time before and since the turn of the century. Asthe parental leave benefit is individual and earnings-based, we examine how fathers’ individualsocio-economic and demographic characteristics are associated with their parental leaveuptake over time, to determine whether there are forerunners and laggards in recent familychange. Multinomial logistic regression models were applied to data from national registers.Our study demonstrates a bifurcation in trends in recent decades. This is associated with theextension of reforms that reserve part of the leave for fathers, the so-called “daddy months”,but stretches beyond the impact of any such reforms. Taking a long leave of over twomonths was pioneered by better-educated residents of metropolitan areas and surroundingsuburbs, as well as Swedish-born fathers. Young fathers, low-income earners and foreign-bornfathers lagged behind in these developments. We regard the unstable labour marketsituation of the latter as a contributing factor in widening social inequalities in family-relatedbehaviour