Which men become involved fathers? The impact of men's own attitudes on paternal involvement in the Netherlands

Abstract

Using data from the first two waves of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, I examine to what extent men's own attitudes explain their paternal involvement after the transition into parenthood. This study moves beyond previous work by incorporating multiple dimensions of paternal involvement, by unravelling issues of causality regarding the measurements of attitudes and behaviour and by taking important father, mother, and child characteristics into account. In line with my expectations, the results show that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience are more (relatively) more involved in childcare tasks. However, results vary depending on the outcome measure studied. First, my finding reveal that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience spend more time (in absolute terms) on playing with their child, but the strength of this association depends on the age of the child. Furthermore, only men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes are relatively more involved in physical and logistic tasks. Both men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and men with higher scores on parenthood status salience are relatively more involved in child care tasks labelled as ‘responsibility’

Keywords:

• paternal involvement
• gender role attitudes
• identity
• parenthood status salience
• transition to parenthood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Renske Keizer is associate professor Empirical Sociology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 2014 onwards, she is also a professor by special appointment in Child Development, with a focus on the role and pedagogical significance of fatherhood, at the University of Amsterdam's (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Keizer's primary research interests are fatherhood and parenthood in an internationally comparative perspective, and the dynamics of partner relationships. Her research straddles sociology, demography, psychology and pedagogy. Central to her work is the application of the theory-based life course approach to the behaviour and well-being of individuals, and (extended) families.

ORCID

Renske Keizer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4051-1406

Notes

1. Ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression is one of the most standard generalized linear modelling techniques.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research to Renske Keizer (NWO MaGW VENI) [grant number 016.125.054].