Absent or involved: changes in fathering of Estonian men working in Finland

Abstract

The aim of my article is to find out how living in the transnational space between two countries with significantly different histories changes family life. I discuss how working in a different country than one’s homeland can change the way one thinks about family and at the same time encourage people to try out new caretaking patterns. I focus on the trend towards more a inclusive family role of Estonian men working in Finland. My results show that transnational working does change the father’s role inside the family; it gives them the possibility to spend more time with their children and even to acquire the main caretaker role during the non-working period. Also, the fieldwork shows that men start to appreciate not only providing for economic well-being, but also being emotionally and socially more present in family life while at home.

Keywords:

• Breadwinning
• caretaking
• cross-border commuting
• Estonia
• family relations
• Finland
• inclusive fatherhood
• transnationality

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented to the conference Gender and (Im)Mobilites in the Context of Work from June 15–17, 2016 in Tromso, I would like to thank all the organizers as well as special issue editors Siri Gerrard, Marit Aure and Marianna Pavlovskaya. Also, I would like to thank all the informants who participated in the research and were ready to discuss all the topics truly and openly. I am very grateful for the support and feedback from the supervisors Aimar Ventsel, Tiit Tammaru and Jaana Vuori. Finally, I would like to acknowledge all three anonymous referees for their useful comments.