Equal roles, equal responsibilities in childcare?

Abstract

As established in the Malta National Reform Programme in April 2014, increasing female participation is at the forefront of the national agenda. Various measures have been introduced to facilitate the return of women to the world of work, including free childcare for working mothers. The effect of such measures is undisputed and Malta has recorded a significant increase in female participation in 2014. Yet is the same expected from fathers? It seems that we continue to attribute caring responsibilities to women and expect them to fit in work and family. The functionalist sociologists Parsons suggested that the traditional family model is made up of a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home. As the dual-earning couple emerges, roles are not so defined anymore however as women taken on paid work, are fathers sharing in family responsibilities? This study investigates six dual-earning couples with young children to discover if family roles are shared in such setting. From this study, it is clear that fathers do not share equally with mothers the responsibility of child rearing. In absence of adequate familyfriendly measures, becoming a parent is not affecting males as much as females. On contrary even when they choose family-friendly measures such as teleworking, mothers are juggling between work and family as they are considered the parent responsible for the upbringing of the children. Whilst a lot has been done to increase female participation, the focus needs to shift on fathers. Fathers need to make use of family-friendly measures to enable them to share family responsibilities with their wives.