Stay-at-home fathers on the wane – In comes daddy day! Changing practices of fathering in German-speaking countries

Abstract

Our commentary brings Boyer et al.'s (2017) argument of a 'regendering of care' through men's growing engagement as caregivers into a dialogue with scholarship from German-speaking countries. This literature supports Boyer et al.'s claim of a connection between labour market opportunities and stay-at-home fatherhood. However, the research from our language context also suggests that fathers who are not gainfully employed do not necessarily become primary caregivers. Furthermore, the number of stay-at-home fathers is shrinking rather than growing. In light of these findings, we suggest shifting the discussion from stay-at-home fathers to fathers as part-time workers and part-time carers. This is where we identify the potential for a subtle revolution that bears the promise of far more wide-ranging changes in the gendering of care.

Full text

Commentary
Stay-at-home fathers on the
wane – In comes daddy day!
Changing practices of fathering
in German-speaking countries
Karin Schwiter
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Diana Baumgarten
University of Basel, Switzerland
Abstract
Our commentary brings Boyer et al.’s (2017) argument of a ‘regendering of care’ through men’s growing
engagement as caregivers into a dialogue with scholarship from German-speaking countries. This literature
supports Boyer et al.’s claim of a connection between labour market opportunities and stay-at-home
fatherhood. However, the research from our language context also suggests that fathers who are not
gainfully employed do not necessarily become primary caregivers. Furthermore, the number of stay-at-
home fathers is shrinking rather than growing. In light of these findings, we suggest shifting the discussion
from stay-at-home fathers to fathers as part-time workers and part-time carers. This is where we identify
the potential for a subtle revolution that bears the promise of far more wide-ranging changes in the
gendering of care.
Keywords
Austria, care, fatherhood, Germany, men, Switzerland, work
The last two decades have witnessed a burgeoning
academic interest in shifting understandings of
fatherhood and of men’s involvement in unpaid care
work (Marsiglio et al., 2000; Oechsle et al., 2012;
Walter and Eickhorst, 2012). But studies on stay-at-
home fathers (SAHFs) are rare (Peukert, 2012: 516).
Boyer et al. (2017) review the existing literature
on SAHFs from North America, Scandinavia and
the United Kingdom. Their geographic focus begs
the question what we could learn by extending our
perspective to contexts outside the English-
speaking world? It would go beyond the scope of
this commentary and of our expertise to attempt an
encompassing overview (cf. Levtov et al., 2015).
However, we’d like to use this opportunity to
explore how SAHFs are discussed in the German-
Corresponding author:
Karin Schwiter, Department of Geography, University of Zurich,
Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Email: karin.schwiter@geo.uzh.ch
Dialogues in Human Geography
2017, Vol. 7(1) 83–87
ªThe Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2043820617691634
journals.sagepub.com/home/dhg

language academic debate and reflect on what we
might learn from that dialogue.
Boyer et al. (2017) argue that recessionary eco-
nomic restructuring with large-scale job losses or
reduced working hours might lead to more fathers
becoming primary caregivers for their children and
thus bring about long-term changes in the gendered
division of reproductive labour. Unlike in the
United Kingdom, the financial crisis of 2008/2009
did not lead to large-scale lay-offs in the German-
speaking countries. In Germany, unemployment
rates dropped steadily from 7.4/7.6%in 2008/2009
to 4.6%in 2015; throughout this period, in Austria
they remained below 6%and in Switzerland below
5%(OECD, 2016b). Therefore, these periods of
economic development aren’t comparable.
Nevertheless, there is evidence from German
research that SAHFs are indeed closely linked to
labour market opportunities. Two recent studies by
Klammer et al. (2012) and Klenner et al. (2012)
analyse families in Germany in which mothers are
the main earners. They conclude that these arrange-
ments often do not result from choice but from
necessity. The arrangements mostly emerge when
fathers are unable to provide for the family due to
redundancy or precarious employment. These find-
ings are similar to those of an older study from
Austria in which many SAHFs justified their
arrangements by referring to previous unemploy-
ment or adverse labour market conditions (Str¨
umpel
et al. 1988 in Peukert, 2012). Similarly, Amacker
(2012) discusses a Swiss case study in which stay-
at-home fatherhood results from job loss. In sum,
the existing literature from the German-speaking
countries suggests that stay-at-home fatherhood
results more from the inability of fathers to be main
earners than from their desire to be primary carers
(cf. also Brehmer et al., 2010).
Irrespective of the causes, Boyer et al. argue that
SAHFs might include an emancipatory potential to
regender care. Reviewing the existing research in
our linguistic region, we want to caution against
imagining stay-at-home fatherhood as a straightfor-
ward role reversal. As Boyer et al. also concede,
there is ample evidence that women continue to do
a large share of household and care work also in
SAHF families (Klenner et al., 2012; Peukert,
2012: 516). Household and care work does not
necessarily shift to the father. Indeed, Koppetsch
and Speck (2015) find that couples tend to use var-
ious strategies that hide their deviation from the
male-earner model. For example, they deliberately
keep the responsibility for household and care work
with the mother, they declare it a merely temporary
arrangement, or they mask the father’s low or inex-
istent earnings. Koppetsch and Speck argue that
these strategies prevent disrupting SAHFs’ gender
identity, which is still strongly linked to employ-
ment (cf. also Scholz, 2009).
Furthermore, the evidence from the German-
speaking countries does not support Boyer et al.’s
UK-based findings that the number of SAHFs is
growing. On the contrary, comparing the results of
two independent representative surveys, Peukert
(2012: 516) concludes that the share of German
households with a female earner and a male carer
dropped from 2%in 1985 to 1%in 2007. According
to the German statistical office, the number of
SAHFs did not grow between 2001 and 2011.
Furthermore, in 2011, only 2%of not-employed
men between 15 and 64 years of age stated that their
status resulted from care responsibilities (German
Federal Statistical Office, 2012: 46). In Switzerland,
2.9%of fathers in two-parent households with chil-
dren under the age of 15 were not employed. How-
ever, less than 0.5%of fathers stated that they were
not in the labour market because of care responsi-
bilities (Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2013: 7).
After a further drop in the number of SAHFs in
2013, the Swiss popular press even discussed
whether the house husband was actually on the brink
of extinction (Kehler, 2014).
Based on the evidence given above, we are rather
critical of Boyer et al.’s argument that recession-
induced SAHFs might lead to a regendering of care.
We suspect that current shifts in the division of care
work do not result from SAHFs but from the grow-
ing number of fathers who continue their careers but
reduce their working hours. In Switzerland, for
example, the percentage of fathers with children
under the age of 25 who work part-time has risen
from 3%in 1992 to 11%in 2015 (Swiss Federal
Statistical Office, 2016). In Austria, the share of
part-time working fathers with children under
84 Dialogues in Human Geography 7(1)

15 years of age has grown from 3.1%in 2005 to
5.0%in 2012 (Baierl and Kapella, 2014: 15). Simi-
larly, in Germany, part-time workers among fathers
aged 27–59 amounted to 5%in 2008 (German
Federal Statistical Office, 2010).
While these numbers might not yet signify a care
revolution, they gain further support from qualita-
tive studies. In in-depth interviews on family plans
with young Swiss adults in their mid-20s, we dis-
covered a marked shift in these adults’ argumenta-
tion. Our first study consisting of 24 interviews was
carried out between 2005 and 2007. The intervie-
wees argued that they strongly support involved
fatherhood and then continued to give a rationale
why stay-at-home fatherhood was not a viable
option for their own families (Schwiter, 2009).
Talking to 46 young Swiss adults again in a second
study in 2014/2015, we found that the interviewees
were still just as sceptical with regard to stay-at-
home fatherhood (Baumgarten et al., 2016). How-
ever, nearly all interviewees evoked the option of
part-time work. Mostly, fathers’ part-time work was
imagined as a reduction from the standard five- to a
four-day week. The interviewees argued that this
day off work was important for experiencing every-
day routines with their child(ren) and thus living an
involved fatherhood. Simultaneously, the arrange-
ment allowed for the mothers to increase their
labour market participation.
In the popular press, this one day off work has
already become a topos and is termed ‘daddy-
day’ (e.g. Mohler, 2014; Sachs, 2010; SAT3,
2016). We concede that part-time work is neither
new nor revolutionary in itself. Nevertheless, we
want to argue that the prevalent discussion of a
daddy-day marks a major shift in the gendering
of care in Switzerland. It extends the fathers’
competence from shared responsibility for child-
care on evenings and weekends to being solely
responsible for everyday routines with children
on an ordinary workday.
Unlike stay-at-home fatherhood, however, a
daddy-day does not disrupt a father’s role as main
earner. It only adds a second role as a part-time
carer. Thus, fathers who work reduced hours do not
lose their identity as breadwinners, which – as
Boyer et al. indicate – is one aspect that has proven
to be challenging for SAHFs. To this date, male
identity in Western societies has remained anchored
in the sphere of work and closely associated with an
employment-centred life course (Baumgarten et al.,
2012; Behnke and Meuser, 2012). Consequently,
men often struggle to build a masculine identity
independently of gainful employment (Hanlon,
2009: 193; Peukert, 2012: 523f; Scholz, 2009). Con-
sidering the persisting stigmas of unemployment
and of housework as feminized work, this is not
surprising. In contrast to SAHFs, fathers working
as four-day earners and one-day carers can evade
this fundamental challenge to their identities.
There are some caveats, of course. First, more
research is needed to find out whether daddy-days
are prevalent throughout society or limited to spe-
cific socio-economic and geographic milieus. Due
to the persisting gap between women’s and men’s
wages (OECD, 2016a), reducing a father’s working
hours in exchange for an increase in the mother’s
share will in most couples result in a net financial
loss. Even in a comparably well off country like
Switzerland, a reduction in income will not be easily
affordable for all families.
Furthermore, we agree with Boyer et al. that a
great deal of research still needs to be done on men
who are part-time workers and part-time carers. We
need to know more about how these daddy-days are
negotiated and lived in the respective families. Do
mothers prepare meals, get gym bags ready and
write a to-do list for the fathers? Do fathers remain
the mothers’ ‘junior partners’ (Behnke and Meuser,
2012: 131) and ‘perpetual trainees’ (Jurczyk and
Lange, 2012: 13)? Or do they become equal partners
in caring? Do daddy-days consist of mainly play-
and-fun or do they also generate a marked shift in
the allocation of housework (cf. Ko¨nig, 2012)? How
does bearing sole responsibility for workday rou-
tines with children shape these fathers’ identities?
Does caring become an integral part of male identity
and bring about a broadened understanding of mas-
culinity (Behnke and Meuser, 2012)?
In sum, we suggest refocusing the debate away
from SAHFs to fathers as part-time workers and
part-time carers, because this is where we see the
need for more research and a great potential for a
subtle revolution regarding the gendering of care.
Schwiter and Baumgarten 85

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank our colleagues Nina Wehner, Andrea
Maihofer, Karsten Kassner and Matthias Luterbach for
many years of inspiring collaboration in studying the
changing practices of fatherhood as well as Anne
Zimmermann for her valuable comments on earlier ver-
sions of this paper. We are grateful to the our colleagues
and the core team of the National Research Programme 60
for their support.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article: the Swiss National Science Foundation,
National Research Programme 60 and the Universities
of Basel and Zurich.
References
Amacker M (2012) Und seit dann bin ich einfach daheim,
Modell Hausmann.” Prek¨are Konstellationen:
Lebensf¨
uhrung von Haushalten in prek¨aren Lebensla-
gen zwischen Erwerbs- und Care-Arbeit (“And since
then, I’ve just been at home, style househusband.”
Precarious constellations: how households in precar-
ious circumstances organize their lives between
employment and care work). In: Moser V and
Rendtorff B (eds), Riskante Leben? Geschlechterord-
nungen in der Reflexiven Moderne. Opladen: Barbara
Budrich, pp. 65–80.
Baierl A and Kapella O (2014) Trend zur Teilzeit (A trend
towards part-time work), Vienna: Working Paper Nr.
81. des O
¨sterreichischen Instituts f¨
ur Familien-
foschung der Universit¨at Wien.
Baumgarten D, Kassner K, Maihofer A, et al. (2012)
Warum werden manche M¨anner V¨ater, andere nicht?
M¨annlichkeit und Kinderwunsch (Why do some men
become fathers and not others? Masculinity and the
desire to have children). In: Walter H and Eickhorst
A(eds),Da s V ¨
ater-Handbuch. Theorie, Forschung,
Praxis. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, pp. 415–443.
Baumgarten D, Wehner N, Maihofer A, et al. (2016)
,,Wenn Vater, dann will ich Teilzeit arbeiten” Die
Verkn¨
upfung von Berufs- und Familienvorstellungen
bei 30j¨ahrigen M¨annern aus der deutschsprachigen
Schweiz. (“If I become a father, I want to work part-
time.” The nexus of career and family plans of
30-year-old men from German-speaking Switzerland)
GENDER – Zeitschrift f ¨
ur Geschlecht, Kultur,
Gesellschaft Sonderheft 4, 76–91.
Behnke C and Meuser M (2012) “Look here mate!I’m
taking parental leave for a year” – involved fatherhood
an images of masculinity. In: Oechsle M, M ¨
uller U and
Hess S (eds), Fatherhood in Late Modernity. Cultural
Images, Social Pracices, Structural Frames. Opladen:
Barbara Budrich, pp. 129–145.
Boyer K, Dermott E, James A, et al. (2017) Regendering
care in the aftermath of recession. Dialogues in Human
Geography 7(1): 56–73.
Brehmer W, Klenner C and Klammer U (2010) Wenn
Frauen das Geld verdienen – eine empirische Ann ¨
aher-
ung an das Ph ¨
anomen der ,,Familienern¨
ahrerin” (When
womenearnthemoney–anempiricalapproachtothe
phenomenon of the “female breadwinner”), D ¨
usseldorf:
Diskussionspapier Nr. 170 des Wirtschafts- und Sozial-
wissenschaftlichen Instituts der Hans Bo¨ckler Stiftung.
German Federal Statistical Office (2010) Frauen und
M¨
anner in verschiedenen Lebensphasen (Women and
Men in Different Phases of Life). Wiesbaden: Statis-
tisches Bundesamt.
German Federal Statistical Office (2012) Frauen und
M¨
anner auf dem Arbeitsmarkt (Women and Men in the
Labour Market). Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt.
Hanlon N (2009) Masculinities and affective equality:
love labour and care labour in men’s live. GEXCEL
Work in Progress Report 4: 191–199.
Jurczyk K and Lange A (2012) Vom “ewigen
Praktikanten” zum “reflexiven Vater”? Eine Einf¨
uh-
rung in aktuelle Debatten um V¨ater (From the
“perpetual trainee” to the “reflexive father”? An intro-
duction to current debates on fathers). In: Jurczyk K
and Lange A (eds), Vaterwerden und Vatersein heute.
Neue Wege – Neue Chancen! G¨
utersloh: Bertelsmann
Stiftung, pp. 13–43.
Kehler K (2014) «Das bisschen Haushalt»: Schweizer
Hausmann stirbt aus. (“That bit of household”: the
extinction of the Swiss househusband). Familienleben
online issue of 24.02.2016.
86 Dialogues in Human Geography 7(1)

Klammer U, Neukirch S and Weßler-Poßberg S (2012)
Wenn Mama das Geld verdient. Familienern ¨
ahrerin-
nen zwischen Prekarit ¨
at und neuen Rollenbildern
(When Mummy Earns the Money. Female Breadwin-
ners Between Precariousness and New Role Models).
Berlin: Ed. Sigma.
Klenner C, Menke K and Pfahl S (2012) Flexible
Familienern ¨
ahrerinnen. Moderne Geschlechterarrange-
ments oder prek ¨
are Konstellationen? (Flexible Female
Breadwinners. Modern Gender Arrangements or Precar-
ious Constellations?). Opladen: Barbara Budrich.
Ko¨ nig T (2012) Familie heißt Arbeit teilen. Transforma-
tionen der symbolischen Geschlechterordnung
(Having a Family Means Sharing Work. Transforma-
tion of the Symbolic Order of Sexes). Konstanz:
Universit¨atsverlag Konstanz.
Koppetsch C and Speck S (2015) Wenn der Mann
kein Ern ¨
ahrer mehr ist – Geschlechterkonflikte
in Krisenzeiten (When the Man is No Longer a
Breadwinner – Gender Conflicts in Times of Crisis).
Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Levtov R, van der Gaag N, Greene M, et al. (2015) State of
the World’s Fathers. Washington: Promundo, Rutgers,
Save the Children, Sonke Gender Justice and the
MenEgage Alliance.
Marsiglio W, Amato P, Day RD, et al. (2000) Scholarship
on fatherhood in the 1990s and beyond. Journal of
Marriage and the Family 62: 1173–1191.
Mohler N (2014) Mittwoch ist Papa-Tag. (Wednesday is
daddy-day). Der Arbeitsmarkt issue 3/2014: 5–9.
OECD (2016a) Gender wage gap. Available at: https://
www.oecd.org/gender/data/genderwagegap.htm
(accessed 08 July 2016).
OECD (2016b) Harmonised Unemployment Rates.
Available at: http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?quer
yid¼36324# (accessed 28 June 2016).
Oechsle M, M¨
uller U and Hess S (2012) Fatherhood in
Late Modernity. Cultural Images, Social Practices,
Structural Frames. Opladen: Barbara Budrich.
Peukert R (2012) Familienformen im sozialen Wandel
(Family Models Undergoing Social Change). Wiesba-
den: Springer.
Sachs S (2010) Heute ist Papa-Tag. Wenn M¨anner
Teilzeit arbeiten. (Today is daddy-day. When men
work part-time) ECO – das Wirtschaftsmagazin des
Schweizer Fernsehns SRF first broadcasted on
25.10.2010.
SAT3 (2016) Freitag ist Papatag. V¨ater wollen mehr als
nur Ern¨ahrer sein. (Friday is daddy-day. Fathers want
to be more than just breadwinners) Science Pro-
gramme Nano first broadcasted on 15.08.2015.
Scholz S (2009) M¨anner und M¨annlichkeiten im Span-
nungsfeld zwischen Erwerbs- und Familienarbeit
(Men and masculinities caught between employment
and family work). In: Aulenbacher B and Wetterer A
(eds), Arbeit. Perspektiven und Diagnosen der Ges-
chlechterforschung.M
¨
unster: Westf¨alisches Dampf-
boot, pp. 82–99.
Schwiter K (2009) ,,Ich w¨
urde gerne den Hausmann
spielen ...” Gute und schlechte V¨ater in den Erz¨ah-
lungen junger Erwachsener (“I’d love to play the
househusband” Good and bad fathers in the narratives
of young adults). In: Villa P-I and Thiessen B (eds),
M¨
utter – V ¨
ater: Diskurse, Medien, Praxen.M
¨
unster:
Westf¨alisches Dampfboot, pp. 213–225.
Swiss Federal Statistical Office (2013) Das Engagement
der V¨
ater in Haushalt und Familie (Fathers’ Engage-
ment in Household and Family). Neuchaˆtel: Swiss
Federal Statistical Office.
Swiss Federal Statistical Office (2016) Erwerbsbeteili-
gung von M ¨
uttern und V ¨
atern (Mothers’ and Fathers’
Labour Market Participation). Available at: http://
www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/20/05/
blank/key/Vereinbarkeit/01.html (accessed 6 July
2016).
Walter H and Eickhorst A (2012) Das V ¨
ater-Handbuch. The-
orie, Forschung, Praxis (The Father Handbook. Theory,
Research and Practice). Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag.
Schwiter and Baumgarten 87