CERIC Seminar with Katherine Twamley: “The potential of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) for transforming gendered divisions of labour”

Katherine is a Professor of Sociology at UCL, her research focuses on gender, social policy, and families, in which she primarily draws on longitudinal, comparative qualitative methods.

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss how the UK parental leave policy landscape shapes understandings and practices of motherhood and fatherhood. I draw on qualitative longitudinal diary and interview data with 21 mixed-sex couples in England, collected before, during and after their parental leave. Half of the sample shared leave and the other half did not. In the analysis, I pick apart how the socioeconomic context and policy formation limits the potential of SPL, in that few parents feel able or inclined to share their leave. But through the analysis of diary and later interview data, I show that SPL nonetheless has transformative potential if its access and appeal could be expanded. I will illustrate these findings with detailed diary accounts, examining what participants did during and after their leave and the meanings they attributed to these practices. The data demonstrate how women on maternity leave alone become the primary carer, through a process of learned expertise and moralised pressures around mothering. Their partners’ lives did not radically change and they did not develop similar care expertise. For sharing couples, normative practices could be counteracted by fathers’ extended leave alone, but couples taking leave at the same time tended to reinforce gendered normative parenting. I detail why these differences occur, showing how fathers on leave alone were able to foster a sense of themselves as primary carers, even if just for a short time. The study fills a lacuna in parental leave research on the ways in which every day ordinary family life is shaped by parental leave take-up and ultimately longer term gendered divisions of labour.

Professor Katherine Twamley

Katherine Twamley is Professor of Sociology at the UCL Social Research Institute, within the Thomas Coram Research Unit, where she leads the Gender, Labour and Diverse Families research cluster. Katherine’s research focuses on gender, love and intimacy, social policy, and families, in which she primarily draws on longitudinal, comparative qualitative methods. She is author of 'Caring is Sharing? Couples navigating parental leave at the transition to parenthood' (UCL Press, 2024) and 'Love, marriage and intimacy among Gujarati Indians: A Suitable Match' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) which was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Award. She is PI of Raising Generation New Era, a pilot study to explore longitudinal qualitative research within a cohort study, and co-investigator on the Parental Night Shift project, exploring parents' experiences of night time care in the UK, Finland and Spain. She is currently on a part-time secondment with the Department for Work and Pensions, where she is part of the Parental Leave Review team.