When migrant men become more involved in household and childcare duties – the case of Polish migrants in Norway

ABSTRACT

In our two studies, we focus on egalitarian attitudes towards gender relations manifested by the readiness to share and actual share of household duties by Polish migrant couples in Norway, where we compare their household arrangements with Polish couples in Poland to verify whether the migration to socio-democratic welfare state country might encourage the use of egalitarian capital within household duties share being advocates of gender equality to other Polish migrants. Our study 1 has showed that living in the society with active policies enhancing gender equality within household helps Polish couple sustain equal arrangements regarding their household duties and parental roles. This acceptance is more profound when analyzed through the lenses of advocating for men to be more involved – as showed in study 2. We thus show the role of cultural factors present in the new homeland society in fostering such gender egalitarian values and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Household duties division
• sociology of couple
• doing family
• migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Bühlmann et al. article was written before the social policies (Second child 500+ benefit and one year parental leave) were introduced in Poland, for the same reason these policies were not addressed by the respondents of the study.

2 Bühlmann et al. distinguish five life stages of a couple:

1. a couple before the birth of the first child, i.e. the couple do not plan a child for two more years,

2. a couple planning to have a child, i.e. one in which at least one member plans to have a child in three years’ time (including pregnant couples),

3. a couple with a baby under two years,

4. a couple with the first child aged between two and five,

5. a couple with a child/ children aged over five years.

The above list fits well into other typologies of family life (Żadkowska, 2010; Gajewska & Żadkowska, 2018) emphasizing the moment of birth and the period of bringing up the first child, which are very important considering an increasing number of household and parental duties in a couple’s life and the necessity to constantly renegotiate their division.

3 Study 1 described in the article refers to three visits in respondents’ households conducted in 2014 and 2015. In our project the same couples were visited five times, three of which are described in the text. In the article we focus on the visits that occurred in 2014 (1st for DDI interviews and 2nd for IDI interviews) and in 2015 (3rd visit for DDI interviews)

4 The paternal leave (one and then two weeks, were introduced in 2012, in 2018 more than 60% of fathers used this possibility).

5 ‘Egalitarian capital’ (Żadkowska & Szlendak, 2016) is a type of cultural capital which couples use and develop while in Norway, a country that is more gender-egalitarian than Poland (Bühlmann et al., 2010). Egalitarian capital is a kind of resource composed of individual's social characteristics (generalized trust radius, gender equality attitudes and probably other factors) in disposition of an individual when encountered with social receiving environment of different characteristics (more egalitarian and equal regarding gender division of labour, including domestic labour) from those of the country of origin. The notion of so it to be a kind of cultural rucksack that one brings which can be a key factor to an integration or even assimilation success.

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Polish-Norwegian Research Programme operated by the National Centre for Research and Development under the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 in the frame of Project Contract No Pol-Nor/202343/62/2013.