Cultural hindrances to ‘involved fathering’ in the context of SPL

The traditional view of fatherhood with its sole breadwinner discourse is now contested (Williams, 2008), with greater involvement by fathers in childcare and family life encouraged and potentially legitimized by the recent introduction of Shared Parental Leave (SPL), wherein employed parents can divide up to 52 weeks of leave between them in their child’s first year. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-five fathers who have taken SPL, our findings focus on men’s experiences when taking primary responsibility for their infants, which has hitherto been primarily associated with the practice of mothering. We first develop men’s notions of what involved fathering means to them, second we explore how men’s fathering projects play out with respect to family, work and childcare experiences. Despite primarily positive experiences, many of the men in our study saw themselves positioned as ‘trailblazers’ and ‘advocates’ of SPL yet alongside this they experienced several obstacles to their adoption of a fully involved caring role. There was evidence of men feeling excluded, for example from certain activities, consumption contexts and social groups. We feed into debates concerning the emergence of a ‘new fatherhood’ (Dermott and Miller, 2015); SPL provides a timely context in which to explore perceptions of fatherhood and potential structural shifts. While SPL clearly reflects and signals changing attitudes and ideals, we question whether the policy in its current form is able to inform the changing in fathering practices as was originally envisaged.