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Barbara Hobson and Susanne Fahlén

1.Introduction

In the 1980s a German father challenged German law that granted mothers the exclusive right to maternity leave beyond the (compulsory) leave mandated by EU law. He claimed that men should be entitled to care leave for children. The court perfunctory rejected his claim saying that the purpose of EU law was not to alter the division of responsibilities between parents, but rather to protect the special relationship between mother and child after the birth of a child (See Hofmann C-184/83). The court ruling reinforced the view of care as primarily the responsibility of women as mothers. In the next decade the EU Directive on Parental Leave superseded this decision. The Parental Leave Directive granted fathers and mothers the same rights to a minimum of three months benefit for leave after the birth or adoption of a child. Policy documents affirmed the importance of men’s rights to care for creating gender equality and a gender balance in work and family life.

“The balanced participation of women and of men in both the labour market and in family life which is an advantage to both men and women is an essential aspect of the development of society, and maternity, paternity and the rights of children are eminent social values to be protected by society, the Member States and the European Community.” (EC 2000/C 218/02;5).

This recognition of father’s rights to care reflected a tilt toward the social spheres of life, once considered to be outside the purview of EU law (Carson 2004).¹ Among member states, new policies and laws have emerged directly targeting men’s caring rights, such as paternal leave and parental leave schemes with daddy quotas, as well as policies that indirectly enabled father’s care, including flexible working times and job sharing. Innovative policies have been introduced in some countries, such as working time accounts, which allow workers to build up time credits during periods in the life course in which they have fewer responsibilities for care (Fagan et al. 2006).

Fatherhood and men’s care entered official discourse in EU documents through the discursive frame of work-life balance (WLB), formulated in terms of an optimal strategy leading to economic efficiency, gender equality, and child well being (EC 2002, 2003).² Yet the goals of productivity and efficiency sit uncomfortably with WLB goals for quality of life. There is disjuncture between the disembodied worker³ who is assumed to be unencumbered by care responsibilities and expected to devote all his/her energies to the one’s job and the embodied worker who is expected to develop strategies to reconcile having and caring for children with employment (Hobson/Fahlén 2009a).

This dissonance has become more pronounced as work demands are intensified in globalized economies so that flexibility and adaptability in the new economy often remove the boundaries between home and work (Perrons et al. 2006). Workers are supposed to be on call and accessible all the time, unable to ‘switch off’ during family and leisure time (Fagan et al. 2007, Duvendak/Stavenuiter 2004).

In this chapter, we focus on these cross-pressures in care and work demands, analyzing the gap between norms/attitudes and practices among European fathers within a capabilities framework, derived from Amartya’s Sen’s approach to agency and capabilities. This allows us to consider differences in individual, institutional, and cultural resources shaping men’s abilities to make claims for care. In the first section we focus on the norms/expectations among European father’s for family time and work-life balance, considering both attitudes and actual and desired working times. In part two we highlight the agency gap in capabilities to exercise rights, in which we analyze different policies for father’s capabilities to claim their rights to care: parental leave, rights to reduce hours and flexibility in working times. In the conclusion we assess the future of fatherhood considering constraints and possibilities across and within different societies.

Hobson and Morgan (2002) make a distinction between fatherhood and fathering, the former encompassing how men as fathers are constituted in law: their rights, duties and responsibilities as well as the discursive terrain around good and bad fathers (the cultural coding of men as fathers). Fathering describes what men do as parents; which includes what they claim as fathers in order to exercise their rights to care. These involve claims for parental leaves and flexible work arrangements. As is obvious fathering practices are shaped by how fatherhood is configured in different societies and institutions (within and beyond the nation state); moreover, father practices are dependent upon employment position and labor markets, work organizational cultures as well as the situation of individual members within families (a variant of the conventional state, market and family triangle, see Hobson/Morgan 2002: 10f.).

The questions we confront reflect these interactions between constructions of fatherhood and fathering:

(1) What are the variations across and within societies in capabilities and agency for achieving work-life balance that allow some fathers to make claims for fathering while others lack the possibilities? More broadly we are addressing how does institutional context matter in shaping not only what men as fathers perceive they can do in care, but also what they can claim. Within this context, time is a crucial dimension in our analysis, viewed as a redistributive resource in welfare states.

(2) To what extent have policy initiatives for greater work-life balance led to a change in men’s caring orientation (attitudes) and practices? In short, how these policies matter?

2.Norms, Expectations and Practices

The new research on men and masculinities has suggested a shift in men’s priorities in valuing family relationships and caring opportunities over work commitment when faced with choices employment, men are considering family time and WLB (Deven/Moss 2002, Marsilglio et al. 1995, Hobson/Morgan 2002, Hobson et al. 2006, Duvander et al. 2006). Our research on men’s attitudes suggest convergence in men’s norms and values around the importance of WLB and the prioritizing of family over work commitment, though we found more divergence across and within countries considering norms for caring within the family. Using European Social Survey for 2004 (ESS)⁴ which incorporated a module of employment and family, we have compared ten countries that represent different configurations of welfare regime types:⁵ Scandinavian or Dual Earner (Denmark, Finland and Sweden), Liberal or Market-Oriented (UK), Conservative or family welfare regime type (Germany, the Netherlands); Conservative-Latin Rim (Spain), and Post-Socialist (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland).

Focusing on questions that address the extent to which work-life balance is a value to be achieved, we find strong consensus for the importance of family over employment and careers. Between 77 and 100 percent of fathers, aged 20-57 with at least one child younger than 13 years of age living in the household, in these ten European countries state that family should be the main priority in life. When asked about gender norms regarding home and care responsibility, the belief that men and women should share this equally is also overwhelmingly accepted among these European fathers (71-96 percent agree with this). Finally, the importance of having a job that allows one to combine work and family has a high priority for our European fathers (see Figure 1). Here the data show that there is little variation across gender.

Figure 1: Proportion of parents stating that it is important, when choosing a job, that the work allows them to combine work and family life (men and women aged 20-57, with at least one child younger than 13)

Nevertheless, we find a persistence of traditional gender norms among European men around the division of care and employment in the family. Significant proportions of men as well as women still agree that women should be willing to cut down on their employment for the sake of the family. Lower educated men (education is used as a proxy for socio-economical status) express a more conservative view of gendered norms in the family than the high educated (as seen in the proportions who agree that women should cut down work hours for the sake of the family).

Figure 2:Proportion of parents who agree with the statement: Woman should be prepared to cut down on paid work for sake of family (men and women aged 20-57, with at least one child younger than 13)

There appears to be growing consensus for gender equality in labour force participation, as we find that the majority of European men reject the proposition that men should have jobs when they are scare. This reflects a growing importance of women s contribution to the family economy, but it also lends support for those suggesting the role of European law and discourse in creating norms for gender equality in employment (Walby 2004). However, the Central Eastern European (CEE) countries are the exception in the latter aspect: between 40 and 63 percent believe that men have more right to a job when jobs are scarce. There are significant differences within our 10 countries by education, except for Finland and Sweden. The high educated fathers support women s equal rights to employment to a higher extent than do those with low education, confirming other studies in which men with higher education are more likely to favour gender equality policies (Fortin 2005, Knudsen/Wærness 2001, Thornton et al. 1983).

Even though some fathers, especially among the low educated, hold traditional gender norms regarding women’s paid work and care responsibilities, this does not automatically translate into support for a single male breadwinner. As these results suggest, we can observe a decline in norms and values that equate male breadwinning with fatherhood. As the majority of fathers express a family and care orientation as well as a belief that achieving a WLB is a value in life to be prioritized, especially in the Northern European countries. When we consider actual work hours that father do, nevertheless, we find a gap between norms, expectations and practices. Long working hours (more than 40 hours per week) are prevalent across our selected countries, ranging from 41 to more than 70 percent. The data shows that over 60 percent of fathers work long hours in Germany, the UK and the CEE countries. A rather high proportion of fathers in the Nordic countries are working long hours (42-50 percent), despite the presence of family friendly policies and discourse. This inconsistency between values, norms and practices can be understood as a gap in agency and capabilities for a WLB.

Another aspect of the agency gap can be inferred from the tensions in every-day lives that long working hours produce. A large proportion of fathers who are working long hours experience conflict between work and family life. Fathers working more than 50 hours a week say that their job always/often prevents them from giving time to their partner or family in comparison to those working fewer hours⁶.

3.The Agency Gap in Working Times

As the above analysis suggests there is gap between father norms on work and care (WLB) and their actual hours working. We have applied Sen’s formulation of agency and capabilities to agency for fathering and care as it allows us to consider how institutional settings shape not only individual practices but also the perception of one’s entitlement to make a claim, the conversion of rights into claims. Agency is a central component in our analysis as we seek to capture not only what fathers are doing, but also what they would like to achieve, the kind of fathers that they would like to be and the fathering/parenting that they would choose (agency freedom in Sen’s theory of capabilities: 1992, 2003).⁷ Within Sen’s formulation of capabilities, WLB can be seen as a functioning (a value to be achieved that enhances quality of life.) He affirms a context-specific approach in selecting and weighing different functionings (outcomes for achieving quality of life). If we view Europe as geographic, social and political region (Sen 1992), men’s ability to have and care for children (combine employment with being involved in the care for children), WLB has become a hegemonic value, imprinted as a norm in EU documents and discourse on gender equality and family well-being. Sen refers to this process as the comprehensive outcome (1992: 151) that encompasses the emergence of values through democratic dialogue. However, in contrast to the instrumental thrust in much of the EU policy analysis, in which WLB is a means for increasing women s labor force or raising fertility rates, the capabilities approach assumes that WLB is value in itself, in which quality of life is at its core.

Our concept of agency gap recognizes differences in situated agency (variations in resources and means) that affect men’s ability to exercise rights to care, but the capabilities approach embeds individual agency into specific institutional settings, which can enhance or inhibit men’s claims for fathering: these include rights for reconciling family and employment as well as the discursive terrain around gender and care. There are path dependencies in the gendered construction of different policies around caring and earning that shape and are shaped by gendered norms of care, which have been characterized as “gender cultures” (Pfau-Effinger 2005, Gregory/Milner 2008). Yet this concept ignores the differences in “gender cultures” among fathers within different societies in their values around breadwinning and care and attitudes toward gender equality in care, between high and low educated fathers, immigrant and native born (Smith 2008, Smith/Williams 2007). It also belies the fluid and dynamic aspects of care, which is being recast and renegotiated in our era of the declining salience of male breadwinner wage ideology and the insecure and unstable economic futures in men’s lifetime earnings.

A key dimension for understanding the agency and capabilities gap in fathering (between being and doing) is in working times. Individual working times vary, but we find country specific working time patterns, defined as working time regimes in which there are different legal and social norms of expected working times in different societies and work organizations within them (Bruning/Plantenga 1999, Rubery et al. 1999). Working time regimes are gendered in most European countries (Hobson/Fahlén 2009b, 2009b, Fagan 2004, Bruning/Plantenga 1999), so that in countries where mothers of young children tend to be out of the labour market or working very short part time work hours, one would expect to find a long working time regime for men. However, there is not always a neat fit between mens working time regime in a specific country (which we have operationalized as the mode in our comparative analysis, Hobson/Fahlén 2009a, 2009b), and women s average working times. The existence of organizational cultures in the private sector, government regulatory systems and collective bargaining agreements all play a role in shaping the working time regime. The working time regime circumscribes what individuals can claim for altering work hours, but one cannot ignore the economic pressures in certain families and the prevalence of low paid poor quality of jobs (so that fathers may have to work two jobs to support a family). The long working time regimes of fathers in CEE countries are only slightly lower for working mothers in these countries, who have a much higher average in working hours than mothers in other European countries. Parents in CEE countries have weak capabilities for decent working times⁸ (Boulin et al. 2006, Hobson/Fahlén 2009b), achieving WLB, with work hours exceeding 40 hours as we discuss below in our analysis of capability working hours.

Looking at the difference between father’s average working times (reflecting the working time regime) and the hours that they would choose to work if it meant a loss or gain in hourly pay, Hobson and Fahlén (2009b) analyzed the differences across countries in what they called capability (working) hours, which reflect what fathers would choose to do taking into account economic constraints (loss or gain in pay). This indicator tells us something about the family economy and individual resources, whereas other questions on desired hours of working time often yield little variation as the majority of working parents would like to reduce working times. Questions on the preferences in the gendering of care and employment in couples reflect the universe of constraints that individual mothers and fathers confront (mirroring what is in place at the time of the interview).⁹

Most fathers seek to reduce their hours extensively, with the exception of fathers in the CEE countries who are working on average over 45 hours a week and state they want to work as much as 47-56 hours per week (if it meant a gain in pay). Keeping in mind that the vast majority of CEE fathers stated the ability to combine work and family life is a priority when choosing a job (Figure 1), we view these “preferences” for long working hours as a reflection of insecure futures and lower standards of living,¹⁰ which underlie the inability of fathers to imagine reducing hours, or in the case of Poland wanting to work more hours. Fathers in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, working at average 44-45 hours per week, would like to reduce their hours far below the 40-hour working time regime week, even if it meant a loss of pay. Fathers in the UK have one of the longest work hours among the EU15 countries (46 hours/week) and highest levels of overtime, would choose to reduce their hour by six to 40 hours.

We found that that while fathers in most of our countries wanted to reduce their work hours somewhat, there were variations not only across these countries but within them. In a previous study Hobson and Fahlén (2009b) analysed individual workplace variables and how these perceptions of risk and well-being were embedded in four different welfare regime configurations: Nordic, Conservative, Southern Rim and Transition countries, former Soviet regime societies (CEE countries).

Our results showed that long hours are associated with the preference for shorter hours: more education, perceptions of stable incomes and job security (individual means and resources) increase the likelihood of fathers wanting to reduce their hours. However, institutional context can weaken differences in perceptions of insecurity and risk as determinants of capability work hours. When we introduced regime clusters into the model, these individual effects became weaker. Hence fathers living in countries, in which jobs and incomes are more secure, have greater capabilities to choose to work fewer hours (substantive freedoms to make choices). For Fathers in CEE countries who tend to have a more insecure economic situation and need to work more hours to make ends meet, reducing hours to achieve a WFB is not feasible. When compared with the Nordic countries, they are ten times less likely to reduce their work hours if it meant a loss of pay (all else equal). The agency gap between the desire to find jobs that allow men time to care and actual working time capabilities is greatest in these societies. Hence agency within the capabilities framework, also implies the possibilities and efficacy to imagine change.

Lee and McCann (2006) employ the concept of working time capabilities as normative framework for worker’s choice (agency) to determine what kinds of working times would best fit their needs, the substantive freedoms an individual has to adopt different working time patterns. Working time capabilities in their analysis is a gender neutral frame. Except for differences in social norms/preferences, there is little discussion of gender dimensions in working time capabilities. They do address some specific entitlements for fathers, which are seen as “one method of encouraging men to play a more significant role in family and domestic work” (Lee/McCann 2006: 87), such as the rights to reduce hours. But they lack an institutional gendered analysis. We are asking which institutional settings are more likely than others to increase capabilities of fathers to care for children. In our analysis time is defined more broadly than working times but also as a redistributive resource in welfare states that shapes fathers claims for care in the household and workplace.

4.Time as a Redistributive Resource: Polices for Work-Life Balance and Fathering

Our capabilities framework involving men’s rights to care necessitates a focus on time as a resource, which reflects the competing claims within households and workplaces. Time- budget studies provide us with a lens on the household and time-use in families, but they do not offer us an analytical framework for interpreting the broader processes that shape the organization of time beyond the individual household level. Time has a structural component that reflects working time regimes and the ways in which working times are regulated via law and collective agreements (Estévez-Abe 2009, Lee/McCann 2006). Time is not only a matter of hours, but also a matter of time spent in different activities and how carework in particular is either valued or devalued considering rights, protections and compensatory levels: whether part-time workers are given the same rights to health care and proportional vacation days; whether those who take time out to care are given pension points for their carework. Whether parental leave is a social right compensated at a high percentage of wages and with a high ceiling has a significant impact on father’s ability to exercise this right and exerts an influence on the proportion of the leave that fathers and mothers. Time from this perspective can be viewed as a redistributive resource in welfare state research, though social rights for WLB and time poverty have not been acknowledged in the classic comparative studies of welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990, Korpi 2000). This is most obvious if one takes into account the ways in which policies increase the agency of fahters who lack educational and economic resources, and social networks.

Three policies areas have emerged in Europe to promote WLB and have the potential to enhance agency and capabilities of fathers to participate in caring activities: rights to reduce hours, rights to reorganize work through flexible time arrangements and parental leaves. Why the right to reduce hours is almost exclusively used by women reflects the structural features of part-time jobs (Crompton/Harris 1998, Widener 2006, Feugen et al. 2004). But as recent studies have shown, this is not necessary inherent in the job tasks, but expresses a work organizational culture (the ever present employee) that in the past and today has assumed a full-time male breadwinner model (Den Dulk/Peper 2007, Den Dulk/Ruijter 2005).¹¹

Parental leave is a policy most often analyzed in relation to mothers’ caregiving roles, though more and more attention is now being paid to fathers’ use of the leave and its effects on gender roles and the division of care in the family (Hobson/Morgan 2002, Deven/Moss 2002, Gornick/Meyers 2008) and on workplace organizational cultures (Bygren/Duvander 2004, Den Dulk/Peper 2007). The take up rates of parental leave, nonetheless, are low among fathers in most EU countries (Plantenga/Remery 2005). The policy formulas alongside low compensation in many countries reflect the cultural coding of motherhood and fatherhood in the society. In three EU countries (Sweden, Norway and most recently Germany), there are specific policy incentives to increase men’s use of care leave, a “use it or loose it” policy (daddy quota) ranging from six weeks to two months so that if fathers do not take the leave, the family loses the higher benefit. Even in the best case scenario among these countries, Sweden, the proportion of fathers’ leave has reached 22.5 percent, though over a third of fathers said that they would have liked to have more of the leave (Hobson et. al. 2011).

The challenge for research on fathering and care is to capture these differences within and across societies employing a multi-level framework and to develop databases that allow for this kind of analysis considering policy level, workplace level and individual household level.¹²

Figure 3:Capability set for fathering and WLB in a European context¹³

We have developed a model based on Sen’s formulation of the “capability set” (1992, 2003) that provides an analytical framework for capturing these interactions: in individual, institutional and societal factors/resources that shape men’s ability to exercise their rights to care – to achieve a WLB that results in quality if life with more time for family and children (see model above). We have placed institutional resources at the centre of our set as we see laws, welfare regime characteristics and workplace organizational cultures as crucial conversion factors for father’s agency to use care rights. Moreover we assume that institutional factors, such as laws and policies for care can shape cultural/societal norms over time by seeding change (see Deakin 2003).

The capability set reflects the agency possibilities or potential to make choices for WLB, or agency inequalities (weak individual, institutional and societal resources to support WLB). To operationalize this level of analysis – agency and agency inequalities for WLB – we designed a survey with a capabilities approach that has been applied in two cities, Stockholm and Budapest.¹⁴ These two societies, in which the dual earner family has been institutionalized in policy and practice for decades, represent opposite ends of the spectrum in father’s capabilities and agency for WLB. Across these two societies, there are vast differences in institutional resources that shape perceptions of economic security in the family economy and precarious in employment. The most striking difference was in fathers’ perception of one’s entitlement to make claims for care. Though compared to most European countries, Hungary has a fairly generous parental leave policy and available for fathers even before the regime change, only five percent of Hungarian men take any leave. Fathers felt not only little entitlement to make claims for fathering and care in the household or workplace, but also many were not aware of their rights under European law or protections in national law for exercising them (Hobson et al. 2011). Alternatively Swedish fathers were aware of their rights and expressed a strong sense of entitlement to make a claim for leave at their workplaces and within the family. Nearly all these fathers with young children said that they were not expected to work evenings or weekends and could easily refuse requests for unsocial hours.¹⁵ Few Swedish men noted any discriminatory treatment towards themselves or others as a result of taking their daddy leave; often referring to laws protecting family rights and protections through collective agreements. Cultural assumptions around mothering/fathering was another area in which we found dramatic differences. Essentialist notions of mothering remained strong in Hungary, as fathers viewed mothers as the natural carers of small children, as did their employers. In contrast Swedish men affirm their father role as nurturers, celebrating the bonding between father and newborn and saw wide acceptance of that role in the family and workplace. These dissimilarities in perceptions and practices of fathering mirror differences in the capability sets of fathers for caring rights and time for care in the two societies. In the Swedish case, we found an institutional embededness of men’s rights to care that has been seeded through policy, discourse and everyday life.

5.The Future of Fatherhood: Convergences and Divergences

There was an assumption in the literature on gender roles, working times and care that as more women would become full time employed and higher educated, men would take on a greater share of care and domestic work (Coltraine 1996, Gershuny 2000). This thesis was challenged early on by the example of the CEE countries: the research revealed that the long history of dual-earning families had had little affect on the division of care in the family and men’s orientations (Crompton/Harris 1998). These predictions have not been borne out for Western European couples either: women still bear the lion’s share of caring times and responsibilities even in countries with father friendly policies and discourses and high women’s labor force participation. No rare men filling the void in the care deficit in the face of women’s increase labor force in countries that were tradtional male breadwinner societies have not put into place adequate childcare services or generous leave policies. Migrant women are being recruited in rising numbers to care for children (and the elderly) to solve the care deficit in many of these societies, most notably in Spain, Italy and the UK (Lutz 2008). In Sweden a policy recently introduced to respond to the time squeeze experienced by dual-earner couples is the tax subsid for domestic/care workers, mainly filled by immigrant women. This has been cast as a gender equality measure (Gavanas 2009), but it is used mainly by middle and upper class families.

Although the lack of significant movement in men’s share of care work lends support for those who see the glass half empty and a stasis in WLB, our analysis and current research suggests that among European men we see movement away from traditional male roles: more support for women’s equal rights to access to employment and less support for women’s traditional role, though this is more true of Northern Europe than in Southern and Eastern Europe (Tazi-Preve/Dorbritz 2005, Smith 2008, Hobson/Fahlén 2009b). We see a shift in orientations, changing values and priorities for family time versus working times. Qualitative studies reveal men’s fathering activities that are not reflected in statistics suggesting more fluidity and dynamic situations (Hobson et al. 2011, Dommermuth et al. 2007). This is not to suggest that the glass half empty account is inaccurate, but rather we see alternative scripts and potential scenarios for change.

Over the last decades, we have witnessed changes in policy and discourse promoting fathers’ care responsibilities and rights at the European level, but variations in entitlements persist and how they are institutionally anchored in terms of protections, levels of compensation and whether rights are social rights, all of which affect fathers’ capabilities and agency to exercise them.¹⁶ The German case is the most dramatic as it represents an about face in a policy frame that has been the paradigm of a maternalist approach to care in which fathers had few rights to care and no incentives in a parental scheme of three years with low compensation. The new parental leave scheme is a move toward the Scandinavian model of father-friendly welfare states. However the road to the sharing of parenting roles is not always a straightforward one. We find detours and inconsistencies in care policies for parenting. Norway and Sweden, coutries that have incentives for father’s care leave, have also introduced a care allowance, which it aimed at allowing mothers to remain at home after the parental leave period, a policy that undercuts the promoting of fahter’s care and more gender equal parenting, as ist places pressure on men to earn more and reaffirms a one and a half male breadwinner model (Brandt/Kvande 2009).¹⁷

Is the gap between polices for more active fathering and WLB and the ability to exercise these rights become wider? Though there is a growing tendency of fathers to spend more time in caring activities, there are significant differences in their capabilities for fathering, reflecting different configurations around care along the state, market and family axis. Yet in all countries the market side has become more pronounced weakening the ability of states for more social investment in care and weakening men’s agency to assert their care rights, with high employment, less secure jobs and economic futures. The regime literature on governance of markets has distinguished coordinated economies from liberal/market ones: the former having greater rules and regulations of markets and working conditions (Estévez-Abe 2005) more job security and greater influence of unions and collective bargaining in shaping work environment, including work flexibility and task autonomy, which are characteristics that enhance men’s capabilities for caring time. However, in global economies in which jobs are less secure and corporatist structures have broken down, social partners no longer have veto power. These differences between coordinated and liberal economies are less discernable (Palier 2010). Welfare states are under strong pressures to reduce social costs in the post global economic meltdown.

The prognosis for the future very much depends on whether the market will trump the political and social forces within societies exerting pressure for more equal parenting, including fathers who have greater expectations and desires to be more involved with the care of their children. In the context of the deepening economic global crises, fathers’ caring capabilities may recede to the margins of EU and national discourse and policy, with more attention directed toward unemployment and instabilities in the financial sector. Quality of life issues that privilege parenting and WLB need to be kept front and centre of the European agenda in order to overcome the inequalities in agency and capabilities for fathering both within and across countries.

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1Spheres of influence broadened beyond the labor market, such as domestic violence, trafficking as well as parenting rights.

2This is also the position in the OECD study, Babies and Bosses, which concludes that family friendly policies can increase living standards, expand workforce and have a positive effect on fertility (OECD 2007).

3This is similar to what Jane Lewis (1997) has called the adult worker model.

4For a description of the data (see Hobson/Fahlén 2009a, 2009b, European Social Survey 2005).

5In choosing these countries we follow conventions in regime clusters combining Korpi’s (2000) typology of Dual Earner, Market Oriented and General Family Support and Esping-Andersen’s typology in the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). The Post-Socialist countries are a hybrid category leaning more toward the Liberal and Market oriented policy configuration, but these societies also would fit Korpi’s dual earner type (Hobson/Oláh 2006).

6These figures are devided from the ESS 2004 data, also used in the above analysis.

7See the recent Report by the Commission on Economic Performance and Social Progress (Stiglitz et al. 2009).

8The ILO defines long working times as above 40 hours per week (ILO 1999).

9Sen underscores the weaknesses of preferences in economic theory making the point that preferences often reflect adaptation to what is possible (see Sen 1992, Lee/McCann 2006). This is also applicable to the critique of Hakim’s work orientations: see Hobson/Fahlén 2009b).

10Data from ESS show that the average ratio of number of rooms in the household and the number of people living in the household is lowest for fathers on the CEE countries compared to our other selected countries.

11One out of five women in EU has a part time job versus one out of twenty men (Mutari/Figart 2001).

12Sullivan et al. (2009) stress the need for the creation of multi-level databases that build in macro-level indicators in order to assess time as redistributive resource across different societies analysing not only direct effects of policies but also those that interact with individual couple-level characteristics.

13This model has been a print of departure in a large-scale comparative project on capabilities and WLB: see Hobson 2011.

14It has been implemented in Osaka, Japan.

15Lee and McCann (2006) note that the right to refuse is indicator of working time capabilities.

16We are not suggesting that there is one to one correlation in men’s actual caring time and specific national polices, and there is some research that calls this into question (see Smith/Williams 2007, Gershuny/Sullivan 2003). We are interested in capabilities and agency that reflects a more holistic view of institutional context and the individual capability set (see figure 3 in the text).

17More Norwegian mothers than Swedish working mothers have used this benefit. In Sweden, a high proportion of immigrant mothers are using it, who are the least integrated in the labor market.