{"id":11283,"date":"2019-07-17T16:43:59","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T20:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/?p=11283"},"modified":"2022-12-07T15:28:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T19:28:25","slug":"what-we-know-about-masculinity-fatherhood-and-caregiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/what-we-know-about-masculinity-fatherhood-and-caregiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Lo que sabemos sobre la masculinidad, la paternidad y el cuidado"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBeing present during childbirth allowed me to feel the greatness of mothers,\u201d says Qiu Jiacheng, 28-year-old business consultant and new father from Shanghai, China, \u201cIt also helped me cultivate a stronger sense of responsibility.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Becoming a father can be a defining step into adulthood, and fathers who take a hands-on role in caring for their children, from the earliest days, often say it\u2019s one of the most fulfilling parts of their lives. According to <\/span>investigaci\u00f3n<\/span><\/a> conducted in advance of the 2019 <\/span>Estado de los padres del mundo<\/span><\/i>, some 85 percent of fathers across seven countries said they would do <\/span>cualquier cosa<\/span><\/i> to be very involved in caring for their newborn or adopted child.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when it comes to the day-to-day work \u2013\u00a0from the diaper-changes, to the cooking, the cleaning, and beyond \u2013 mothers are still doing much more than fathers are. Stereotypical gender norms all too frequently place women in the role of primary parent and encourage and excuse men who don\u2019t take on their fair share. No country in the world has achieved equality in unpaid care work, and women are doing more paid and unpaid work <\/span>combined <\/span><\/i>worldwide as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reaching equality in how much work parents are doing, off the clock, is a key factor in reaching equality at work, in politics, and in education.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does our research say about the links between masculinities, fatherhood, and caregiving?<\/b><\/h3>\n

1. Rigid gender roles are still too common. Many still expect men\u2019s primary contribution to family well-being to be financial.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Women and men alike are more likely to say that \u201cfinancial care\u201d \u2013 which includes earning enough money to pay for the expense of raising a child \u2013 should be a primary responsibility of fathers as compared to mothers, according to new data from the <\/span>Estado de los padres del mundo<\/span><\/i><\/a> 2019<\/span> report. No similar trend exists for \u201cemotional care\u201d or \u201cphysical care,\u201d suggesting that expectations of men as the default breadwinners and women as the default emotional carers of children are particularly strong. These stereotypes impact how decisions are made, and who has access to opportunities to work and to be a caregiver, within families and across societies.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Despite\u00a0<\/strong>fathers wanting to be involved in childcare, they face barriers to taking the full amount of paternity leave offered to them.<\/b><\/h4>\n

Paid paternity leave, alongside maternity leave, is a powerful way to support dads to bond with their children from early on, and women want men to take it. Over 72 percent of women across six countries say that mothers would have better mental health if fathers took at least two weeks paternity leave, according to data from the <\/span>Estado de los padres del mundo <\/span><\/i>2019. However, even when it\u2019s offered, less than half of fathers \u2013 across seven countries \u2013 took as much time as their country\u2019s policy allowed. Fathers often worry what others will think if they prioritize their children over their work. They also worry that their income, and their family\u2019s income, will suffer if they take parental leave. The study found that, in the US, 73 percent of fathers agreed there was little workplace support for fathers, and one in five men were afraid of losing their job if they took the full amount of paternity leave offered to them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. When new fathers take paternity leave, they\u2019re glad they did.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Across seven countries \u2013 Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, UK, and US \u2013 fathers <\/span>who reported<\/span><\/a> taking longer paternity leave after the birth or adoption of their child were also more likely to report personal benefits in terms of mental health and life satisfaction. This includes interest or pleasure in doing things, and increased satisfaction with their overall life, job, and sex life for fathers in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Japan, and increased feelings of hopefulness, and satisfaction with their overall life and involvement with their children for fathers in Canada and Argentina.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can we transform norms around masculinities, fatherhood, and caregiving to close the unpaid care gap and achieve gender equality?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

To get to a world where more men are hands-on parents and more parenting relationships are equal, we can start by reflecting on the ways that strict ideas of masculinity and gender norms impact our ideas about fatherhood, and work to build stronger relationship and parenting skills. Equimundo\u2019s <\/span>Programa P<\/span><\/a>, implemented with RWAMREC in Rwanda works with expectant fathers and fathers of young children, taking them through activities and discussions on gender and power, fatherhood, decision-making, violence, and caregiving. A <\/span>ensayo controlado aleatorio<\/span><\/a> (RCT) evaluation revealed that men who participated in the program were more than twice as likely as those who did not participate to listen to their partner and tell them that they appreciated them, and spent almost one hour or more per day doing unpaid care work and household chores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Acknowledging and reflecting on the role that social and gender norms play in holding back progress toward equality in care work is a first step, but this work must go beyond individual people. Governments must work with teachers, childcare workers, and health care providers to actively bring dads into conversations around parenting responsibilities and they must provide leave for all parents of all genders. Schools must teach children the importance of care from an early age, building on the evidence-based curricula. Workplaces must train their human resources staff and carry out workplace-based campaigns and employee outreach programs that create a workplace environment that fully supports women and men as parents and caregivers in addition to being workplace leaders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Convertirse en padre puede ser un paso decisivo hacia la edad adulta, y los padres que asumen un papel activo en el cuidado de sus hijos desde peque\u00f1os suelen afirmar que es una de las etapas m\u00e1s gratificantes de sus vidas. Seg\u00fan una investigaci\u00f3n realizada con motivo del Estado Mundial de los Padres de 2019, cerca del 85 % de los padres en siete pa\u00edses afirmaron que har\u00edan cualquier cosa por involucrarse activamente en el cuidado de su hijo reci\u00e9n nacido o adoptado.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":11145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[204,183,221,155,849],"class_list":["post-11283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-caregiving","tag-fatherhood","tag-masculinity","tag-paternity-leave","tag-rwamrec","program_areas-caring-men","geography-global","program-program-p"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11283"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15196,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions\/15196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}