Workplace support of fathers’ parental leave use in Norway

Abstract

This article highlights the importance of social policy and working life contexts for employed fathers’ use of parental leave. It directs attention towards the Norwegian model, which is known for its gender equality aims and welfare-state support to families, but which is also active in the regulation of working life. Based on interviews with fathers who have used the father’s quota (a statutory, earmarked, non-transferable leave), findings run counter to work–family research where gendered assumptions in work organizations are found to prevent active fathering. The interviewed fathers report positive attitudes and supportive practices among employers. Fathers’ stories show that their use of the leave is subject to cooperation and compromising processes at the workplace level that research on fatherhood and organizations have hardly addressed.

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Community, Work & Family
ISSN: 1366-8803 (Print) 1469-3615 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccwf20
Workplace support of fathers’ parental leave use
in Norway
Berit Brandth & Elin Kvande
To cite this article: Berit Brandth & Elin Kvande (2019) Workplace support of
fathers’ parental leave use in Norway, Community, Work & Family, 22:1, 43-57, DOI:
10.1080/13668803.2018.1472067
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2018.1472067
Published online: 24 Dec 2018.
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Workplace support of fathers’parental leave use in Norway
Berit Brandth and Elin Kvande
Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim,
Norway
ABSTRACT
This article highlights the importance of social policy and working
life contexts for employed fathers’use of parental leave. It directs
attention towards the Norwegian model, which is known for its
gender equality aims and welfare-state support to families, but
which is also active in the regulation of working life. Based on
interviews with fathers who have used the father’s quota (a
statutory, earmarked, non-transferable leave), findings run counter
to work–family research where gendered assumptions in work
organizations are found to prevent active fathering. The
interviewed fathers report positive attitudes and supportive
practices among employers. Fathers’stories show that their use of
the leave is subject to cooperation and compromising processes
at the workplace level that research on fatherhood and
organizations have hardly addressed.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article souligne l’importance des cadres de la politique sociale
ainsi que de la vie professionnelle pour l’usage du congé parental
des pères qui travaillent. L’article dirige l’attention vers le modèle
norvégien. Parmi les objectifs de ce modèle est l’égalité des sexes,
et il est également connu pour son soutien de l’État providence
aux familles. Pourtant, il réglemente aussi activement la vie
professionnelle. Fondée sur des entretiens avec des pères qui se
sont servi du congé parental (un congé qui est statutaire, réservé
et non transférable) les conclusions vont à l’encontre de la
recherche travail-famille où l’on trouve que les suppositions
genrées des organisations du travail empêchent la paternité
active. Selon les pères qui ont été interviewés ici, il y a parmi les
employeurs une attitude positive et des pratiques coopératives.
Les histoires des pères indiquent que leur usage du congé est
soumis à des processus de compromis et de coopération au
niveau de lieu de travail qui n’ont guère été abordés dans la
recherche sur la paternité et les organisations.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 13 March 2017
Accepted 2 April 2018
KEYWORDS
Parental leave; working life;
fathers; Norwegian model;
context
MOTS-CLÉS
Congé parental; pères;
monde du travail; le modèle
norvégien; contexte
Introduction
This article considers how employed fathers experience workplaces’reactions to parental
leave. Internationally, fathers have increasingly become the target for government incen-
tives to encourage their involvement in the family, father-specific leaves from work being
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Berit Brandth Berit.Brandth@ntnu.no Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, Trondheim NO-7491, Norway
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY
2019, VOL. 22, NO. 1, 43–57
https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2018.1472067

one such measure. Research on greater father involvement has often been concerned with
barriers represented by work organizations, and many work–family studies have shown
how gendered assumptions at the workplace have made them change-resistant
towards fathering. Lewis and Stumbitz (2017) raises the question of how research can pro-
gress beyond describing barriers and instead identify conditions of change and shifts in
workplaces to contribute to involved fatherhood. Work organizations contribute to con-
struct fathering practices, and because they are increasingly confronted with the
demands of social policy regulations, they are an interesting context for studying
change in fathering practices (Liebig & Oechsle, 2017, p. 9). The aim of this article is to
understand how policy regimes contribute to workplace practices and cultures that can
promote active fathering.
Thus, a concern of the article is to explore how national parental leave policies with a
father’s quota affect the workplace. Norway introduced a father’s quota of four weeks into
the parental leave scheme in 1993. An important aim was to contribute to gender equality
based on the ideas of a symmetric family of two worker-carers. This quota, which currently
is 10 weeks (2017), is widely supported by the general population and by mothers and
fathers (Lappegård & Bringedal, 2013). It became a major practice a few years after its
introduction, and today an even larger majority of eligible fathers use all or part of it
(Kitterød, Halrynjo, & Østbakken, 2017). The quota has become a mature institution, and
to take it is held to be a norm for employed fathers (Halrynjo & Kitterød, 2016; Naz,
2010). Parental leave is now available to fathers in many countries, but its usage is
often low (see Koslowski, Blum, & Moss, 2016). This is different in the Nordic countries,
something that directs our attention to the importance of the institutional context,
which not only includes welfare state regulations of parental leave rights but also their
implementation in working life.
How the leave is implemented in working life has received little attention by parental
leave researchers, and compromises between fathers and organizations have hardly been
addressed (Liebig & Oechsle, 2017). Scarce attention has also been directed towards the
wider institutional contexts of which the parental leave regulations are part. According
to Lewis and Stumbitz (2017), work–family studies in general have neglected context-sen-
sitive research, particularly when it comes to understanding how the various contextual
levels interact. Contextual awareness is important to catch the impact of different and
changing institutions. Contexts include working life and social policies that vary over
time as well as between countries, and it includes a country’s family and gender norms.
Responding to Lewis and Stumbitz’s(2017) call for contextual awareness, this article
focuses on two contextual levels: welfare state in terms of parental leave regulations
and work-life culture.
The book Work-Family Dynamics (Brandth, Halrynjo, & Kvande, 2017) illustrates the
importance of context. It demonstrates how parental practices can be understood as a
competition between different institutions and their cultural logics in various countries.
The institutions of welfare state, labour market and family with their respective logics of
regulation, economy and morals confront each other differently according to time and
place. The logics of parental leave regulation and good fathering are for instance chal-
lenged by the economic logic of working life in various ways. Even if fathers on parental
leave are legally granted job security, leave may still have negative effects on their careers,
particularly in professions where the career logic is strong. Among business lawyers, the
44 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

cultural logic of the career game is found to overrule the formal regulations, resulting in
low, if any, take-up of the father’s quota (Halrynjo, 2017).
Although many organizations are changing to support fathers’leave-taking in response
to national policies, change may be uneven. Differences in national contexts are for
instance illustrated in a study of a Norwegian company trying to introduce the Norwegian
parental leave system to their branch office in New York. This led to tensions between two
national work cultures, but at the same time forged the introduction of new local practices
(Heggem & Kvande, 2017). Such pockets of change are promising for men’s family invol-
vement. Most often studies report how the economic logics of work privilege men who
have uninterrupted career trajectories, few care responsibilities and long working hours
(Miller, 2017). In Rudman and Mecher’s article from the US (2013), men who request
family leave are penalized and given a poor worker stigma. In a study of reasons for
non-use of paternal leave (APL) in Great Britain, Kaufman (2017) finds perceived workplace
resistance to be one of four central barriers, and Romero-Balsas, Muntanyola-Saura, and
Rogero-García (2013) show that men who do not use parental leave in Spain justify
their choice in workplace cultures and their own feeling of being indispensable at work.
Fathers who do not take leave tend to argue that they cannot be away from work. Com-
paring UK and Sweden, Kaufman and Almqvist (2017) found Swedish employers to be
more accepting of men’s use of long parental leave than UK employers.
Focusing on the Nordic countries, several studies show that workplaces may not rep-
resent particularly serious hindrances. Haas and Hwang (2009) hold that corporate
support for fathers taking parental leave has increased in Swedish companies, and attri-
bute this to the larger supportive cultural environment and institutions in which the com-
panies are embedded. Men in Sweden are met with positive attitudes when taking
parental leave –even to a greater extent than women; this can be connected with the
strong support for gender equality in the Nordic countries (Bekkengen, 2002). A Finnish
study also shows that attitudes toward men’s paternity leave are predominantly positive,
as very few fathers who take leave get negative reactions from colleagues and supervisors
(Lammi-Taskula, 2007). Furthermore, recent studies from Norway find the workplace level
to have little negative effect on parental leave (Halrynjo & Kitterød, 2016), emphasizing
that in all kinds of work organizations, it has become acceptable that fathers take their
father’s quota (Kvande and Brandth, 2017; Naz, 2010).
In order to understand why fathers in the Nordic countries encounter different patterns
than those found in the larger literature, this article will explore how contextual factors and
the policy regime in which workers operate shape the use of leave among fathers. Thus,
the research question concerns how working life and welfare state interact in a Norwegian
context to produce take-up of leave among fathers. Based on interviews with fathers, who
have taken leave, three sub-questions are explored in the subsequent empirical sections:
(1) How does the father’s quota with its particular design affect workplace attitudes? (2) In
what practical ways do workplaces support father’s leave taking? (3) How do fathers them-
selves manage their leave in relation to work?
The Norwegian model of working life
There is a long research tradition focusing on the Nordic model of working life, which is
important to take into account in order to understand how laws and regulations work
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 45

in Nordic countries (Bungum, Forseth, & Kvande, 2015; Kangas & Palme, 2005). Although
there are great similarities between the Nordic countries, there are also significant differ-
ences. Here, we focus on the Norwegian working life model that has been labelled a ‘con-
flict partnership’and is based on an understanding that there is both a conflict of interest
and a common interest between employer and employees. At the societal level, it is
characterized by the cooperation between the social partners and state authorities,
called a three-party cooperation (Dølvik, Fløtten, Hippe, & Jordfald, 2014). This cooperation
is considered a competitive advantage and is successful in increasing productivity in
working life (Levin, Nilssen, Ravn, & Øyum, 2012). Based on this collaboration, laws and
regulations have been developed and institutionalized in work life.
At the workplace level, the model includes various ways of involving employees in
decisions within the companies, through formal and informal participation. Formal partici-
pation is connected to the professional organizations of the employees and cooperation
between employee representatives and employer, for instance by appointing employees
as members of the board of directors. The Work Environment Act §12 also grants employ-
ees the right to informal participation in decision-making concerning the daily work situ-
ation. This has been called the Norwegian ‘micro model’(Hernes, 2006)or‘micro
democracy’whereby employees have the opportunity to influence how the company is
organized and managed. The emphasis on cooperation and representation has also
been characterized as employees being ‘citizens of the companies’in order to underline
the democratic aspect. An important feature of the model is the mutual recognition of
rights and obligations. Employees’individual rights anchored in laws, agreements and
unions influence institutional conditions that limit managers’autonomy (Gooderham,
Nordhaug, & Ringdal, 1999). Managers are expected to encourage employees’partici-
pation and empowerment and in return they can expect employees to be devoted to
work and productivity (Levin et al., 2012).
In a study of the Norwegian model, Ravn (2015) finds that the management function is
often exercised in collaboration between managers and employees. This implies that the
Norwegian model also includes a management model that embraces values and norms of
equality, solidarity and democracy (Grenness, 2003). These values are reflected in the fact
that work organizations often have few hierarchical levels and are characterized by a small
distance between managers and workers (Gallie, 2003).
The Norwegian model also includes collaboration between employers, employees and
the state in developing social and economic policies. There is a long tradition of strong
trade unions combined with regulated working conditions that has been thought to
both protect employees and enhance productivity. A consequence that is often empha-
sized is the high degree of trust between managers, union representatives and employees.
Trust means that the parties can both negotiate wages and collaborate on productivity.
Thus, all social partners in Norway support the father’s quota. Some of them even argue
for an extension in order to get an equal distribution of leave between mothers and
fathers. The father’s quota is understood to have the potential to promote the dual
earner/dual carer model, which is seen as having a positive effect on productivity.
This Norwegian micro model empowers employees and focuses on the development of
democratic work relations, helping employees to accept, trust and feel responsible for
working life laws and regulations. This model is the important institutional context for
our analysis of the usage of parental leave by fathers in Norway.
46 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

Parental leave regulations for fathers
Norwegian statutory parental leave regulations are part of the work and welfare area of the
Norwegian model. Parents earn the right to leave through participation in working life. In
this way, family policies are closely connected to work life policies, thereby encouraging
gender equality by promoting earning for mothers and caring for fathers. The father’s
quota is an earmarked, non-transferable right for fathers. Since it is forfeited if not used,
the consequence of not using the quota is that the leave period, and thus home-based
care for the child, is shortened accordingly.
Norway’s parental leave scheme consists of 49 weeks that are 100% wage compensated
up to a ceiling of approximately EUR 62,410 per year (2017). Parental leave is part of national
social insurance that covers income loss while caring for a young child. The agency that pays
fathers their money is NAV (Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration). Leave is thus
covered by taxes and does not burden organizations with large direct costs. For fathers
with earnings above the ceiling, collective agreements ensure that employers pay the differ-
ence between wages and state compensation. Of the total period, mothers and fathers can
share 26 weeks between them (family entitlement). Ten weeks are earmarked for each
parent, and mothers have an additional three weeks before birth. Hence, at the time of
writing, fathers have the exclusive right to 10 weeks
1
of fully compensated parental leave
on a take-it or leave-it basis. The father’s quota has been politically contested in disputes
about gender equality and parental choice (Ellingsæter, 2012), and over the years,
various Norwegian governments have increased as well as reduced its length.
The use of the father’s quota over the years shows that it has worked well as a measure
to get fathers to take parental leave. After the father’s quota was introduced, there was a
large increase in the proportion of eligible fathers who took leave the following years, from
4% in 1993 to 85% in 2000. Over the past decade, the take-up rate among eligible fathers
has stabilized at about 90%. Fathers are less likely to use the quota if they have low or very
high income. About 13% of fathers are ineligible because they do not have the required
employment history, including students, unemployed and some immigrant fathers.
Employed fathers are also eligible for two weeks paternal leave around the birth of the
child paid by the employer, but there are no benefits for the fact of being fathers. As
the available length of the father’s quota has increased, fathers have taken leave corre-
sponding to what is available (Fougner, 2012). When it has decreased, fathers have
taken less leave. For example, in 2012, when the father’s quota was 12 weeks, fathers
used 19% of their total parental leave days. In 2013, when it was 14 weeks, fathers’use
of the total available days increased to 22% (Prp 1S2014–2015, p. 203). Statistics show
that mothers take the parental leave that may be shared between parents.
Data and method
This research draws on an interview study involving 40 cohabiting or married heterosexual
fathers who had been home on leave with the father’s quota, their total leave ranging from 2
to 10 months. The fathers selected for interviews had become fathers after the father’s
quota was extended from 6 to 10 weeks in 2009, thus assuring their experiences with a
fairly long leave. In subsequent years, the quota was prolonged to 12 and 14 weeks, but
was reduced again to 10 weeks in 2014 when a conservative government gained power.
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 47

Our sample had thus used the quota differently in terms of length and in terms of organiz-
ation of its use. About half the sample had used their leave flexibly either as part-time or as
deferred leave. These fathers are not part of this analysis as long, full-time absences from
work are expected to cause the most serious problems for workplaces.
The interviewed fathers were recruited by contact with various work organizations, in
addition to snowballing individual fathers. An extra effort was put into finding intervie-
wees with lower educational backgrounds. This was only a partial success as a little
over two thirds of the sample has a college or university education. The occupational com-
position of the sample is, however, varied comprising craftsmen, teachers, consultants,
researchers, health, administrative and service staffs. They work in many different forms
of organizations. A majority of the sample is employed in private companies of various
sizes, and 10% were self-employed.
Most of the interviews took place in 2012 and 2013. The fathers and mothers had all been
employed before the birth of the child. Most fathers were employed full time, and only a
couple of students held temporary work. A majority of the fathers were in their thirties, the
age range being between 27 and 43 years. About a third of the sub-sample was recent
migrants to Norway, mostly from European countries. All fathers lived with the mother and
child. The children involved may be the first, second or third child. The interviewees lived
in one of the larger cities in Norway. Fathers most often take their leave after the mother,
i.e. starting when the child is from 9 to 12 months old, and at the time of the interview, the
oldest child was two and a half years old, making fathers’leave experiences quite recent.
The interviews, conducted by the authors and assistants, were semi-structured and lasted
from one to two hours. Our questions were mostly open-ended, which allowed askingfollow-
up questions in response to participants’answers. For the most part, the fathers were inter-
viewed in their homes. The quotations used in this chapter have been translated from Nor-
wegian to English by the authors, and respondents are given pseudonyms.
We first read the recorded transcripts extracting each father’s stories about workplace atti-
tudes to their leave-taking. These stories were told in response to questions about their work
and career ambitions, workplace culture, work–family situation, co-workers’parental leave
use, management opinions about parental leave for fathers and gender equality. We also
asked hypothetical questions such as ‘what if there was no quota?’or ‘what if the quota
was not based in law’. Many issues emerged, and after sorting into categories, a second pro-
cedure involved interpretation, including dialogue with literature and theory. A final step was
carried out to connect issues that could contribute to a coherent presentation in this paper.
The fathers told different stories about workplace support. Workplaces were all, however,
in favour of the father’s quota. As pointed out, a large majority of eligible fathers use the
quota, which implies that there might be a high level of acceptance in work life in
general. As seen from the sample characteristics, it is limited in size and scope. Interviews
with the 10% of eligible fathers who had not used the quota might have produced a differ-
ent picture, although the reasons for non-use are diverse (see Kitterød et al., 2017).
Findings
In order to explore the importance of working life in creating acceptance for father’s use of
the father’s quota, we first explore the importance of the design elements of the father’s
quota for workplace attitudes as reported by the fathers.
48 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

The importance of leave design
Parental leave research has documented that non-transferable parental leave rights, rather
than gender-neutral rights to families, are more effective when it comes to getting fathers
to take leave (Brandth & Kvande, 2012; Brighthouse & Wright, 2008;O’Brien & Wall, 2017).
The fathers are aware that the design of the leave is important for their use of it and that it
has a special effect in their relation to the workplace. Kristian, a craftsman, with a daughter
aged two, elaborated: ‘It’s a law and …that’s very important. It’s the most important thing,
actually.’If all the leave was voluntary for fathers, he continued:
…then it would be a major problem for men to get …very many men would have problems at
work to take voluntary leave. Really. I’m sure! That’s what would happen to me at any rate, guar-
anteed! Yes. And I think that would be the result in very different industries and professions too.
Kristian firmly established the importance of the quota’s basis in law. It is a collective right
given to employed fathers and thus pre-negotiated by the state. Kristian strongly believed
that if the father’s quota was not based in law and also retained as a separate, non-trans-
ferrable right for fathers, fathers would not only have to negotiate with their employers
but also the chance that they would fail in such negotiations would be considerable. As
another father, Johannes, an architect, pointed out, ‘it’s a different thing to tell your
employer that you will take the earmarked quota than it would be to take optional
leave’. An earmarked right for fathers seems to make men feel entitled even if asserting
family needs might be less in accordance with gender expectations at work.
The fathers also think that if they had to individually negotiate with the employer in
order to be granted leave, this would lead to differential treatment of fathers, depending
on their status with the management. ‘The obligation to take leave ensures that the
employer does not treat people differently’, Fabio (a university teacher) said. In a gendered
field where caregiving is considered to be for women, there is a higher probability that
men who choose to take optional leave may be penalized or at least met with scepticism.
The earmarked father’s quota is understood as father’s time. That it cannot be trans-
ferred to the mother, i.e. cannot be made optional for fathers like shared parental leave,
promotes fathers’use of it and seems to have made it into a norm for work organizations
as well. The fathers described many hypothetical situations that might come true if the
father’s quota were not earmarked and non-transferable. Negative workplaces do exist
as a master narrative, even though their own experiences of compliant bosses strongly
contrasted what they had heard about or would expect. Situations with a heavy workload
would for instance imply negotiations over when the leave should be taken and for how
long. Then, what might happen might be that:
‘…the boss doesn’t want the employees to take leave. Employees will actually have to go
into the office and plead for it. Even if this is something they have a right to, it would be
very difficult. At least if the company is swamped with work …it’s never suitable, you know,
Sivert, who worked in construction, said. ‘It’s just because of this …This is why they
designed it like that. If not, nothing would have come of it’, he added.
Interviews revealed not only that employers felt compelled to allow men to take leave
but also that the quota put pressure on individual fathers to go against any ideal worker
norms. Steinar, an engineer with two daughters, held that having an earmarked quota for
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 49

the father is an unconditional strength in relation to work. Ludvik, another engineer,
claimed that because of the non-transferability of the quota
it feels like something you ought to …that it’s something you should take, really. [ …] It feels
like there’s pressure on you to take it. That …if you want to be a good parent, or a good father,
then you have to take the daddy leave.
Here we see the expression of the normative element. Its importance was voiced in several
ways:
I think it’s good that they are calling for the father to be at home in this way. It’s possible to
choose not to take it, and then you simply lose those weeks. If it’s so important that the father
is at work, then it simply needs to be that way. Then you have some pressure on you. (Steinar,
civil engineer, two daughters)
These strong moral obligations for fathers to take the father’s quota and for employers
to accept it, produced in part by the design elements, seem very important in understand-
ing the high use of the quota among fathers in Norway. In addition, an important incentive
might be that the leave is highly compensated, ensuring that most fathers do not lose out
economically when they take leave and that employers are not burdened with salary pay-
ments to fathers on leave.
As seen above, the fathers’recognize that earmarked, non-transferable leave makes a
clear difference in terms of the normative acceptance of their care obligations at the work-
place. That this design is important is supported by Bloksgaard’s(2015) study from
Denmark showing that when earmarked and non-transferable leave does not exist,
fathers must negotiate individually with their bosses. Negotiating optional parental
leave results in fathers taking less leave.
Realization of the regulations
This section explores how workplaces support usage of the father’s quota in practice.
None of the fathers in the study reported that they had experienced any serious pro-
blems with their employers when planning to take their leave. That men take the
father’s quota when they become fathers seems to be expected at workplaces,
which can be understood by the acceptance of regulations in Norwegian working
life. When telling about reactions at work, Charles, a schoolteacher who took 12
weeks father’s quota, said ‘It was all right, and it [the leave] was expected! It had
been more of an issue if I hadn’t taken it. Public work places have to play by the
rules’. This observation is also more general. Fathers seem to take it for granted that
work life adapts to the regulations of the welfare state. Christian, a senior advisor in
the county administration, argued that even though the father’s quota might some-
times represent challenges at workplaces, organizations do adapt to parental leave
legislation. He said:
We have five weeks of vacation every year. Workplaces manage to adapt to that, and when
employees turn 60 they get one additional week. So, we manage that, and we have
managed to adapt work to the fact that mothers are home for one year [on parental leave].
Why shouldn’t we manage to adapt to fathers taking their quota of 12 weeks? It is a question
of planning and organizing.
50 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

Fathers report that as leave-takers they do not stand out as special or tokens in any way.
Arne, a communication adviser in a transport company told us that at his workplace
many of my male colleagues had a child at about the same time as me, which was great! We
were about 3 or 4 who had kids within a 2-3 months span. In addition, there are many employ-
ees with small children working here.
The norms that are produced by these practices make it easy for fathers to take the leave
and for organizations to accept it. Dahl, Løken, and Mogstad (2014) who studied the peer
effect of father quota usage in social security data found that Norwegian fathers were even
more likely to take the quota if their colleagues and peers did; this was described as ‘a
snowball effect’. The effect was greatest if this peer was a manager at a higher level in
the organization.
The general pattern is that fathers inform their employers of their plans, and the
employers approve it. The plan also includes how their work would be handled in their
absence. Arne had a long leave of nine months, consisting of the father’s quota plus six
months of sharable parental leave. This could have caused negative reactions, because
at the time when he wanted to start his leave, he was new at his job and things were
busy at work. When he told his boss that he was going to become a father and wanted
to take a long leave, he still received only positive reactions.
The boss messed with me and said he would authorize everything that had to do with the
leave as long as I promised to give him a high score in the next appraisal meeting. But that
depends since I had to find my own substitute, ha, ha. So we’ll have to see.
That he had to plan for the coverage himself can be interpreted as an obstacle to leave-
taking, but Arne mentioned it as evidence of the trust the boss showed him and the
freedom he was given.
Burt, who worked in a bank, said that his employer supported whatever would function
best for Burt himself. ‘So, I had to do the planning myself. The boss signed what had to be
signed, and I didn’t discuss much with him. I just said what I wanted, and he said ok’.
Martin, who worked as an architect, explained how he experienced applying for parental
leave for 16 weeks at his workplace:
I just asked, how do we do this in practice? Should I send in the paperwork or should you do it? I
didn’t feel that I had to negotiate about this. I knew that it was a right I had, and I just informed
them (employer) quite early about when I planned to take leave. Because we are so few people
working in this office, we need a bit of organizing when one of us is on leave a few months, so I
let them know as soon as I could. That was that! There were no negative reactions.
Like Burt’s, Martin’s story illustrates an absence of negative reactions. They just
informed their employers about their plan, and they approved it. There were not many
people working in Martin’s firm, which might have represented a problem when one of
the employees went on leave because of having less people available to replace fathers
on leave. Yet, this was arranged.
The parental leave rules are complicated and may be quite difficult to understand in all
their detail. Harold, a schoolteacher, explained that the principal at the elementary school
where he worked did not know the parental leave rules very well and gladly accepted
Harold’s own plan.
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 51

I think he [the boss] had a very pragmatic attitude to it and thought: ‘“Ok then, let us find a
substitute!’” The administration didn’t get actively involved in the paper work, but they
seemed to think: ‘“this is how it is; so we just have to adjust as best we can’.
Ismael, a warehouse worker with two children, told yet another story of supportive
employers. He took his father’s quota after the mother returned to work. During his
leave, he learned that their daughter had been granted a place in kindergarten and was
due to start two weeks after his leave had ended. His manager, who had been positive to
his leave-taking all along, suggested that Ismael extend his leave by moving two weeks
of his summer holidays towards the end of the father’s quota period in order to close this
care-gap. This solution made him able to stay home for 12 weeks altogether to care for
his daughter until she could be cared for by the kindergarten. Supportive employers are
not only found among organizations that employ highly educated knowledge workers.
We get a further impression of workplaces’support of fathers’leave use when fathers
compare their employer with NAV, the institution that validates the application for leave
and pays out parental benefits. Fathers found their employers to be more understanding
and easy to deal with than NAV. For instance, Arne, who took nine months leave because
his wife wanted to return to her studies, had many meetings and phone calls to negotiate
with NAV. ‘They could not fit my case into their forms –that I, by the way, discovered were
outdated’. His employer, however, helped him straighten things out. ‘I received a lot of
backing from them’, he said. Also Dave, who was a student and held four part-time jobs
in combination with his studies and thus gained leave eligibility, told how all of his
employers assisted him more than he had expected in his rather difficult negotiations
with NAV. Research has documented that one of the main reasons why some Norwegian
fathers do not take the quota (or less than the full quota) is problems in relation to NAV
(Kitterød et al., 2017).
According to the master narrative of workplace hindrances, it is often expected that
employers not only resist men’s leave-taking but that they stall their careers or interpret
their family involvement as an indication that they are not dedicated employees. Niels
pointed to the opposite and said that not taking leave would have been understood to
mean that he was not concerned about his children. When asked whether his leave was
taken as a sign that he was not enough interested in his work, Arne said:
No. I think most employers today live in the modern world and understand that they must live
up to that. This is how it is. They need employees who are happy with their job and have a
good family life. Now, we see that both managers and middle managers in companies, 35-
40 years old, also experience the same tensions concerning career, childcare, parental
leaves and work hours. I have a mate who is manager of marketing, only a few years older
than me in a top job; he had four months daddy leave, so that says a lot.
Arne pointed out that a person’s overall effort and performance at work are what
counts as a signal of work devotion, not whether they take temporary leave from work.
What particularly surprised fathers who were migrants to Norway was that taking leave
did not have any negative consequences for them in terms of job or wage loss. One of
them said:
I knew we were not supposed to have problems at work, but I was a little concerned whether
that was actually true because sometimes things look good on paper, but it may be that you
get some problems. But I had no problems, and I felt really privileged I could have leave.
52 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

Reconciliation processes
Employers who are supportive of fathers’leave-taking may obtain more loyal and com-
mitted employees in return. This may be attributed to the trust and cooperative practices
between employers and employees that are inherent in the Norwegian model. In this
section, we look into how fathers manage their leave-taking in order to be home for
several consecutive weeks.
The fathers did not abruptly abandon their job when the leave date came but were pre-
pared to be considerate to the needs of the workplace. Martin, who took full-time leave for
16 weeks, was willing to help out a bit if it had been necessary, saying, ‘I would have been
there for them an hour or so and explained matters to them’. Small businesses may be
particularly vulnerable when it comes to fathers taking leave from work (Bygren & Duvan-
der, 2006). Fredrik was the only one holding the technological competence in the small
architectural firm where he worked. He stated that he took his leave in one continuous
period, as this was easiest to handle for his firm: ‘My way of organizing the leave was
for the most part in consideration for the job. It is simplest for the job. When I am
away, I am away!’Fredrik preferred to keep work and home separate. However, even if
he tried to maintain a strong boundary between work and home during his leave of 26
weeks, he was still a bit available to the job:
I own the data-skills in this firm, so they called and asked for assistance sometimes. We agreed on
that. It is ok, butI told them to limit it as much aspossible, and they are very good at it, I think. They
called mostly in the beginning of my leave as there were matters they had forgotten to ask me
about before I started leave, but lately they have been good at refraining from calling. And, it’s
important to me, because I don’t want to think too much about my job when I’mhomeonleave.
Beyond ‘helping a bit over the phone when they trouble about things’, Fredrik did not
work during his leave. He seemed to volley back and forth a bit between work and
home at the start of his leave, but managed to keep the spheres separate as time
passed. His employer could have been negative to him taking leave because his compe-
tence was essential to the firm, but the solution they agreed upon was satisfactory to both
of them. The employers respected the aim of the parental leave regulation. In return,
fathers respected the needs of the workplace and adapted the start of their leave to it.
Many of the interviewed fathers appeared very confident when portraying the quota as
being their leave. They conveyed a sense of entitlement and beliefs about what is right and
fair. Peter, an engineer with one daughter, took 10 weeks father’s quota. He sometimes
was contacted by his workplace and asked to help out:
I sometimes helped out when she slept, but I let them know that it had to be on my conditions,
that I couldn’t promise anything, I would only do it when I had the time, and I would register
the hours I worked, generously. If I worked one hour, I would register two or three. It was ok as
it only amounted to five or six times during my leave, and only two-three hours at a time.
From this quote, we observe that Peter felt empowered by his right to parental leave.
Hobson and Morgan (2002, p. 14) hold that family-friendly policies provide men with discur-
sive resources with which they can make claims upon their employers. Peter communicates
that it is he who controls how much work and when to work, and he is not afraid to insist on
his time priorities. After his leave had ended, he worked fewer hours without reduced pay
when his daughter was due to start kindergarten and needed her parents present.
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 53

Daniel, a research scientist who started leave with his first child before he had com-
pleted a project, tells another story about how he managed leave in relation to work.
What made it extra challenging was his position as head of an international research
group in which people from other country contexts did not have the same respect for
fathers’parental leave rights. ‘Working outside Norway makes it extra challenging. In Nor-
wegian projects, people are more used to …“ok, he has his daddy leave”, so they handle it
differently’, he said. Consequently, he did some work at home after the children were put
to bed. ‘I have to work a bit at home. It is like …you have to find out what functions for
you, find your balance’.
There were many different examples in the interviews of how work and leave were
planned to fit each other, such as various internal redistributions of work tasks and assign-
ments or work put on hold. For instance, Cristopher planned his leave to fit in with the
seasonal variations in his work, and Martin, who started preparing for his leave far in
advance, finished assignments and gave responsibility to colleagues. John, who was a uni-
versity teacher, planned to take his leave when the students worked on their term papers,
and Inge, who worked in property development, was very concerned about timing his
leave period in relation to work demands. He said:
I have been fortunate with my employer. I work in projects; I finished a project before the
leave, and I won’t start a new project before I come back. So, because of this I don’t have a
bad conscience for anything at work. It is very positive that I am not in conflict with my
employer.
Sometimes, the employer just had to accept that the leave took time away from work.
Steinar said: ‘It’s quite clear that the project we are involved in will have to be put on hold,
and we’ll lose customers because of that, but too bad!’This is a story in which the moral
obligation of fatherhood overrules the logics of work.
It is interesting to see that so many fathers organized their leaves with the needs of their
workplaces in mind. It is also interesting that the leave so often gained priority. The inter-
views show a give-and-take situation concerning the leave. Employers are supportive, and
fathers, who want to take the father’s quota and be home with their babies, are willing to
have an easy transition period in order to reduce possible problems at work. It seems very
important, however, that they are able to control the amount of work themselves so that
work does not interfere too much with their caregiving.
Conclusions
While much work life literature has documented how workplaces often work counter to
fathers’involvement in family and childcare, Nordic research has shown different tendencies.
The aim of this article has been to understand how Nordic policy regimes, using Norway as an
example, contribute to workplace cultures that promote active fathering. Findings show that
fathers do not encounter much opposition to their parental leave use but rather enjoy con-
siderable support at their places of work. These findings stand in contrast to the picture
painted in the existing literature, and they are promising as they show that workplaces can
be organized both structurally and culturally in ways that support fathering.
The study has identified the Norwegian working life model as one context for opening
up opportunities for involved fathering. Work organizations in Norway are generally law-
54 B. BRANDTH AND E. KVANDE

abiding with respect to government regulation and accustomed to ensuring worker pro-
tection and employee rights. Since the father’s quota is an employment-based right, it
seems to be handled in the same way as other types of rights and regulations in
working life. Employers leave it to the fathers to plan their leaves; they assist in nego-
tiations with NAV if necessary and adjust work, prepared to find solutions. In short, work-
places take leave use into consideration and deal with it pragmatically. When findings
show how the use of the father’s quota is subject to acceptance, trust and respect, we
recognize elements of the Norwegian model of working life, based on democratic work
relations (Dølvik et al., 2014), with a mutual recognition of rights and obligations, which
also includes the parental leave regulations.
Another contextual element is policy design. The analysis shows how the characteristics
of the quota manage to reduce company resistance and career risks that might have been
there had it not been for this design. It is also an important element that leave is part of
national social insurance and does not burden organizations with the full costs. The
fathers’experience that the way the quota is constructed –as an individual, statutory, ear-
marked and non-transferable entitlement for fathers –is important for how it is perceived
and practised in working life. This is in line with research findings concerning the effects of
different types of leave on gender equality (Brandth & Kvande, 2012; Brighthouse &
Wright, 2008). The design of the father’s quota makes it promote gender equality
through breaking down cultural barriers in family and working life. Most of the parental
leave systems outside the Nordic countries are for the parents to share. Such policies
may enable gender equality but put no pressure on fathers to use them. For countries
in the process of designing or refining their leave policies, our results provide important
recommendations concerning the design of the leave.
This article answers the call for research on the wider institutional contexts of which
parental leave regulations are part (Lewis & Stumbitz, 2017). It has shown how the Norwe-
gian context with its working life model and social policy regulations may account for an
optimistic picture concerning the implementation of parental leave rights for fathers in
working life. This may be an inspiration for other countries and encourage them to look
beyond organizational constraints when explaining low take-up. A positive attitude to
the implementation of leave may make fathers’leave use a ‘normal’decision in the work-
place. To gain more knowledge, research with different samples and comparative studies
on the linkages between various institutional contexts may be important contributions
from future studies.
Note
1. From July 1, 2018 the father’s quota will be extended to 15 weeks.
Acknowledgement
We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
COMMUNITY, WORK & FAMILY 55

Funding
This research has been funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 219116/F10).
Notes on contributors
Berit Brandth is a professor emerita of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Political Science
at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim (NTNU), Norway. Her research
focuses on gender, care policies, work/family reconciliation and rural sociology. One central area of
study is fathers’use of parental leave; another is family, work and gender in a changing rural context.
Elin Kvande is a professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. Her research focuses on
gender, work and family reconciliation and welfare state policies. One central area of study has
been fathers’use of parental leave; another is internationalization and the Nordic model of work
and the welfare state.
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