“When I was on parental leave, I took care of cleaning, shopping, cooking, all the basic work.\u201d Pekka, a 37-year-old Finnish journalist, is talking about what happened when he took solo charge of his one-year-old son during the day over several months, while his wife went back to work after maternity leave.<\/p>\n
It was, he says, \u201cnatural\u201d to take on the broader household tasks. \u201cI can\u2019t remember any quarrelling about it. I did as much as I could. That was part of my job during leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pekka stayed at home for 8 months with his son. \u201cI took two weeks paternity leave when the baby was born and one more week later. Then, when he was about 16 months old, I stayed at home, combining annual holiday with care leave. We did not want to put him in day care before he was two years old. It was OK for my wife to stay at home a year and a half, after which I took the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The picture Pekka painted of his family life is one that our network of research colleagues is finding in many countries when fathers take extended leave from work to care for their young children while their partners return to work. Our findings are set out in a new book<\/a> published this month. We have found that the way couples work together in these situations is qualitatively different from how family life typically operates when a father takes just a couple of weeks of paternity leave around the time of birth and then goes back to work.<\/p>\n