Men and Childcare: An Issue for Public Policy?

Paul Callister

In recent decades throughout the OECD a variety of initiatives have aimed at achieving equality for women in paid work, but there has been a reluctance to develop complementary policies for equal sharing of non-market work within the home.

However, a substantial long-term increase in the participation of women in paid work and recent significant increases in male unemployment raise the question of whether men should be encouraged to spend more time in unpaid household work.

This paper looks at arguments for developing policies for greater involvement by men in childcare, which revolve around three themes: benefits to women, benefits to children, and benefits to men. It then examines the research findings on what factors encourage men to be highly involved in childcare (eg, higher levels of education, “alternative” work and value commitments), and those that work against men looking after children (eg, societal attitudes towards gender roles, lack of informal networks for support and childcare).

Although this is a difficult and complex area, the paper concludes that there are significant reasons why governments should be interested in men and childcare, continuing in the vein of policies such as gender-neutral parental leave.