Daniela Grunow and Marie Everstsson (eds.): New Parents in Europe: Work-Care Practices, Gender Norms and Family Policies. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2019

The volume “New parents in Europe: Work-care practices, gender norms and family policies” is edited by Daniela Grunow and Marie Everstsson and was published by Edward Elgar in 2019. It is the second of two closely related books to come out from the Transparent network, an international research cooperation which was established by the editors of this volume and which studies the transition to parenthood. The impetus for the research presented in these volumes is the finding that though individuals across countries report increasingly egalitarian attitudes toward the division of paid and unpaid labor, the lived experiences after the transition to parenthood do not appear to mirror those attitudes. In other words, the key question is why do couples, which declared the intention to divide tasks equally once they become parents, display less egalitarian task allocation after welcoming their first child? The answer provided by the research presented in this volume is certainly of interest to family scholars and social demographers alike. Based on in-depth interviews with heterosexual, dual-earner couples during pregnancy and after the transition to parenthood, the authors examine how “non-normative” (as labeled in the book) pre-birth plans about the division of paid and unpaid labor were either realized or modified and even abandoned over time. The truly impressive data collection effort spans eight European countries (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic).

The study of why new parents, who planned to divide tasks equally, resist or embrace a more “normative” division of labor (i.e., one that “reflects an orientation towards gendered separate spheres of (predominantly female) caring and (predominantly male) earning,” p. 4) is organized around three key analytical perspectives: the couple perspective, the transition perspective, and the institutional perspective. First, by interviewing both partners within a couple, the researchers highlight how individual experiences of parenthood and parenting choices are tied to those of the partner. Across many of the national contexts, the interviews demonstrate that whereas fathers’ involvement in childcare is often framed as a choice, mothers’ commitment and, importantly, ability to care are perceived as more “natural” and “instinctual.” Therefore, it is mothers who are left as the default carers when circumstances following the birth require adjustments in the initial plans or when barriers to fulfilling the original intentions prove to be too high. Second, the transition perspective adopted in the book means that the authors continuously reflect on the change over time in the couples’ pre-birth expectations about parenthood and everyday life: What precipitated the change and how was that change reasoned about by the partners. An interesting point here is that often the shifts in the initial plans were framed in terms of changes in the person’s self-identity as an earner or caregivers (e.g., “as I lay there on the operating table and they delivered the baby—something just snapped [..] from now on my full priority was the child,” Chapter 11, a Czech stay-at-home mother, with initially non-normative working plans). Finally, the institutional perspective comes to the forefront primarily in the reflection on how the expectations and reactions of significant others, as well as the existing family policies within a country, enable egalitarian couples to stick to their pre-birth plans. Several chapters highlight that undeniably, when strongly-committed-to-egalitarianism couples live in supportive contexts (e.g., Sweden), they largely follow through with their pre-birth desires; however, when policies and normative feedback are not aligned with the original aspirations, changes are often observed in mothers’ combination of work and childcare in particular (e.g., Italy, Switzerland). Interestingly, however, even in the presence of supportive policies and equalitarian normative climates, the couples whose pre-birth plans displayed more willingness to be flexible about the division of labor end up with a more “normative” allocation of tasks after the transition to parenthood (as demonstrated in the chapter on Sweden). Of course, “normative” is a highly context-specific term as exemplified by the fact that the shortest paternal leave taken in Sweden, for any type of couple, is 4 months.

Overall, the book presents an engaging read on the narratives which parents across different countries put forward when asked why their pre-birth plans about the division of paid and unpaid labor changed or were, indeed, fulfilled after the birth of the first child. At times, the focus on specific themes was not always evident in each chapter, potentially leading the reader to wonder whether certain topics truly did not emerge during the interviews in all countries. A noteworthy illustration was the amount of tension within the couple resulting from the lack of desired equality. This is a key observation for couples in Poland, for example, but rather absent in other contexts.

In the end, we need to recognize that this volume presents the stories of a select group of individuals. As is acknowledged in the book, the interest in how dual-earner couples experience the transition to parenthood means that the recruited participants were better educated, had higher incomes, and were frequently older when they became parents than their average peers. Since the focus is also on couples who declared egalitarian plans at the time of the first interview, this means that the reflections in this volume present the experiences of a select group of individuals in some countries in particular (notably, in Spain only six of the 50 interviewed couples reported egalitarian plans at the first interview and four realized those plans). At the same time, the fact that even many of these couples resorted to more traditional division of labor after the transition to parenthood is a notable finding in itself, highlighting the numerous barriers which individuals face in the pursuit of a more equitable division of tasks. The editors reflect on this observation by highlighting two key “take-home messages” from this volume. Foremost, social policies play a vital role in shaping couples’ experiences of parenthood. At the same time, however, gender culture matters. The endorsement of the conviction that women have distinctly different traits from men which make them a more “natural fit” for the task of caring, makes it difficult for couples committed to egalitarianism to maintain that equality when difficulties emerge.