The Causal Effect of Paternity Leave on Fathers’ Responsibility for Children

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 18. Parental Leave and Family-Friendly Policies: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Although fathers have increased their time in child care over the past several decades, mothers remain the primary caregivers responsible for the daily care and overall well-being of children. While previous studies provide some evidence that paternity leave policies may alter these gendered patterns of parenthood, they also often focus narrowly on one dimension of father-child time – child care time. As such, existing research may underestimate the potential of policy to impact fathering practices and its potential to change how parenthood functions as a persistent mechanism of gender inequality. I extend previous research by examining whether reserved paternity leave increases father involvement across three dimensions: engagement (routine or interactive caring for children), accessibility (time in children’s presence), and responsibility (solo parenting; time engaged with or accessible to children when the mother is not present). Using time use data from the 2005 and 2010 Canadian General Social Surveys, I exploit the “natural experiment” of the unique paternity leave policy introduced in 2006 in the province of Quebec compared to the rest of Canada, which provides only shared parental leave. This difference-in-difference framework allows direct causal estimates of changes in fathers’ behaviour at a population-level, mitigating some concerns about confounding factors. I find that the paternity leave policy led to an increase in fathers’ time spent solo parenting their children, and as such, that this policy resulted in fathers’ increased responsibility for their children.

Author

• Dana Wray, University of Toronto