Furthermore, the experience of taking leave changes men’s behaviour even after they return to work, altering the division of labour at home and at work for years to come. Sociologist Ankita Patnaik found that after Quebec increased parental leave benefits and established a use it or lose it five-week quota for fathers in 2006, men’s take-up rates increased by 250%. By 2010, 80% of eligible men were using the leave, and the duration of their leaves had increased by 150%. Even after exhausting their leave, these fathers kept doing more cooking and shopping, while their partners increased their paid labour. A study of the impact of one “daddy quota” reform in Norway found that couples who bore their last child just after the reform were 50% more likely to share laundry duties than those who had their last child just before the reform. Not surprisingly, they also reported fewer conflicts over housework.
The longer the leave, the greater its impact. In Sweden, fathers who take longer leaves than average remain more involved in childcare and household work than fathers who take shorter leaves.
Just as every generation of working women has passed on more egalitarian values to their children, each generation of involved fathers will do the same. Young men were much more likely to share housework and childcare with their partner if they saw their fathers doing so when they were children. And daughters of hands-on fathers are less likely to be channelled into traditional gender roles at home. In Norway, girls born after the paternity leave reform were assigned fewer household chores as teenagers – many years after their fathers had returned to work – than their counterparts born just before it.
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