Interrelated Parenting Practices: Conceptual Foundations of Involvement in Care Work at the Transition to Parenthood

Autor(en)

Eva-Maria Schmidt, Irene Rieder, Ulrike Zartler

Abstrakt

Numerous studies have explored parents' unequal involvement in care work, emphasising the formative power of the first period of parenthood. However, detailed knowledge of how care work is interlinked between parents in everyday practice during the transition to parenthood and how these linkages are related to gendered inequality is limited. Based on an Austrian qualitative longitudinal study with first-time parents (66 individual interviews with 11 couples during pregnancy, 6 and 24 months postpartum), we developed a typology of parental involvement in care that captures the relationality of parents' practices, their fluidity over time and that embraces six types of interrelated parenting practices. Results show how parental involvement is constituted by a complex interplay and sequence of parenting practices performed by both parents. With regards to gender inequality in care work, we demonstrate that parents are thus situated on a continuum between equality, dichotomy, ambiguity and inequality when doing care work. The results systematise the tremendous variety of parents' interrelated involvement in care work.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Soziologie

Journal

Families, Relationships and Societies

Band

8

Seiten

321-340

Anzahl der Seiten

20

ISSN

2046-7435

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1332/204674318X15241492154458

Publikationsdatum

2019

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

504014 Gender Studies, 504011 Familienforschung

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f999652b-a8d1-4c74-8930-5adc4ce60432