This book portrays men’s experiences of home alone leave and how it affects their lives and family gender roles in different policy contexts and explores how this unique parental leave design is implemented in these contrasting policy regimes. The book brings together three major theoretical strands: social policy, in particular the literature on comparative leave policy developments; family and gender studies, in particular the analysis of gendered divisions of work and care and recent shifts in parenting and work-family balance; critical studies of men and masculinities, with a specific focus on fathers and fathering in contemporary western societies and life-courses. Drawing on empirical data from in-depth interviews with fathers across eleven countries, the book shows that the experiences and social processes associated with fathers’ home alone leave involve a diversity of trends, revealing both innovations and absence of change, including pluralization as well as the constraining influence of policy, gender, and social context. As a theoretical and empirical book it raises important issues on modernization of the life course and the family in contemporary societies. The book will be of particular interest to scholars in comparing western societies and welfare states as well as to scholars seeking to understand changing work-life policies and family life in societies with different social and historical pathways.

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Fathers on Leave Alone: Setting the Scene
• 2. The Ethics of Care and the Radical Potential of Fathers ‘Home Alone on Leave’: Care as Practice, Relational Ontology, and Social Justice
• 3. Fathers on Leave Alone in Norway: Changes and Continuities
• 4. Fathers on Leave Alone in Portugal: Lived Experiences and Impact of Forerunner Fathers
• 5. Fathers on Leave Alone in Quebec (Canada): The Case of Innovative, Subversive and Activist Fathers!
• 6. Fathers on Leave Alone in Finland: Negotiations and Lived Experiences
• 7. Fathers on Leave Alone in Spain: ‘Hey, I Want to Be Able to Do It Like That, Too’
• 8. Fathers on Leave Alone in Sweden: Toward More Equal Parenthood?
• 9. Fathers on Leave Alone in Iceland: Normal Paternal Behaviour?
• 10. Fathers Taking Leave Alone in the UK – A Gift Exchange Between Mother and Father?
• 11. Fathers on Leave Alone in France: Does Part-Time Parental Leave for Men Move Towards an Egalitarian Model?
• 12. Fathers on Leave Alone in Switzerland: Agents of Social Change?
• 13. Fathers on Leave Alone in Japan: The Lived Experiences of the Pioneers
• 14. Discussion and Conclusions
• Erratum: Chapter 13 Fathers on Leave Alone in Japan: The Lived Experiences of the Pioneers