Using data from the first two waves of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, I examine to what extent men's own attitudes explain their paternal involvement after the transition into parenthood. This study moves beyond previous work by incorporating multiple dimensions of paternal involvement, by unravelling issues of causality regarding the measurements of attitudes and behaviour and by taking important father, mother, and child characteristics into account. In line with my expectations, the results show that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience are more (relatively) more involved in childcare tasks. However, results vary depending on the outcome measure studied. First, my finding reveal that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience spend more time (in absolute terms) on playing with their child, but the strength of this association depends on the age of the child. Furthermore, only men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes are relatively more involved in physical and logistic tasks. Both men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and men with higher scores on parenthood status salience are relatively more involved in child care tasks labelled as ‘responsibility’

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doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2015.1078531, hdl.handle.net/1765/87088
International Review of Sociology
Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS)

Keizer, R. (2015). Which men become involved fathers? The impact of men’s own attitudes on paternal involvement in the Netherlands. International Review of Sociology, 25(3), 359–372. doi:10.1080/03906701.2015.1078531