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Articles

Breadwinning as care? The meaning of paid work in mothers’ and fathers’ constructions of parenting

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Pages 445-462 | Received 07 Oct 2016, Accepted 06 Mar 2017, Published online: 19 Apr 2017
 

ABSTRACT

As some scholars have argued for a distinct conceptualisation of breadwinning and for understanding breadwinning as a form of care, this study addresses parents’ constructions of breadwinning and its connections to care. It is based on an in-depth interpretive analysis of multiple-perspective, qualitative longitudinal interviews with 22 Austrian mothers and fathers from three points in time during their transition to parenthood. The analysis revealed four different types of breadwinning concepts by considering the jointly constructed meaning of mothers’ and fathers’ paid work within a parental couple and further relied on Tronto’s [(1993). Moral boundaries. A political argument for an ethic of care. New York, NY: Routledge] conceptualisation of care as a four-step process. The results indicate that respondents construct a clear difference between earning money and breadwinning. Additionally, a difference is made between breadwinning and taking care of the family’s subsistence, predominantly so for mothers. In conclusion, breadwinning can definitely be considered a form of care and thus a form of involvement in parenting, but it cannot be regarded a form of involvement in caregiving. The holistic picture of parents’ joint constructions enabled us to contribute to the existing conceptualisations of breadwinning and of parental involvement, thus providing a novel perspective on matters of gender equality.

RESUMEN

El presente estudio retoma investigaciones que exigen una definición clara del concepto del sustento (= breadwinning) y de un entendimiento más amplio de sustento que incluye también el cuidado. El foco está tanto en las dimensiones del trabajo renumerado como en la dimensión del cuidado en la construcción parental de paternidad. Se basa en un análisis hermenéutico de entrevistas cualitativas - desde una perspectiva multilateral - y longitudinales hechas a 22 madres y padres austríacos que fueron encuestados en tres momentos durante la transición hacia la paternidad. Este análisis se basa en el concepto de Tronto (1993) del cuidado como proceso de cuatro etapas y lo tenía en cuenta en las estructuras del significado conjuntamente construídas sobre el trabajo renumerado de la madre y del padre. Se averiguaron cuatro diferentes tipos de sustento. Los resultados indican que los entrevistados construyen diferencias muy claras entre ganar dinero y el sustento. Las construcciones diferencian entre el sustento y el cuidado por el bienestar económico de la familia, especialmente con respecto al trabajo renumerado de la madre. Este estudio demuestra en consecuencia que el sustento puede ser considerado como forma del cuidado, y por lo tanto como participación en la paternidad, pero no como participación en el cuidado de los niños. Esta visión holística hacia los procesos constructivos conjuntos de los padres contribuye además al desarrollo de la conceptualización teórica del sustento y de la participación parental y ofrece así una nueva perspectiva en la igualdad de género de los padres.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Irene Rieder, Ulrike Zartler, Caroline Berghammer, Susanne Vogl, Rudolf Richter, Cornelia Schadler, Ryan Jepson and the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I also wish to thank the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna for their financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Eva-Maria Schmidt is a predoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna. She studied Sociology and European Ethnology. Her research interests are parenting, fatherhood and masculinity, gendered transition to parenthood, cohabitation and marriage, work and organisation, parental leave, biographical research and qualitative methods in social sciences. Currently, she is working on her PhD on the topic of parenting between care and career.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant number 320116 and by the University Jubilee Foundation of the City of Vienna (Hochschuljubiläumsstiftung der Stadt Wien) under Grant number H-284605/2015.