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[Objective:] This study examines whether paternal part-time employment is related to greater involvement by fathers in child care and housework, both while fathers are working part-time and after they return to full-time employment. [Background:] The study draws on four strands of theory—time availability, bargaining, gender ideology, and gender construction. It studies couples' division of labor in Germany, where policies increasingly support a dual-earner, dual-carer model. [Method:] The study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1991 to 2015 on employed adult fathers living together with at least one child younger than age 17 and the mother. The analytic sample comprises 51,230 observations on 8,915 fathers. Fixed effects regression techniques are used to estimate the effect of (previous) part-time employment on fathers' child-care hours, housework hours, and share of child care and housework. [Results:] Fathers did more child care and housework while they worked part time. Yet, most fathers reverted to previous levels of involvement after returning to full-time work. The only exception was fathers with partners in full-time employment, who spent more time doing child care and took on a greater share of housework after part-time employment than before. [Conclusion:] The findings are largely consistent with the time availability perspective, although the results for fathers with full-time employed partners indicate that the relative resources and gender ideology perspectives have some explanatory power as well.

When gay couples become parents, they face a host of questions and issues that their straight counterparts may never have to consider. How important is it for each partner to have a biological tie to their child? How will they become parents: will they pursue surrogacy, or will they adopt? Will both partners legally be able to adopt their child? Will they have to hide their relationship to speed up the adoption process? Will one partner be the primary breadwinner? And how will their lives change, now that the presence of a child has made their relationship visible to the rest of the world? In Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood, Abbie E. Goldberg examines the ways in which gay fathers approach and negotiate parenthood when they adopt. Drawing on empirical data from her in-depth interviews with 70 gay men, Goldberg analyzes how gay dads interact with competing ideals of fatherhood and masculinity, alternately pioneering and accommodating heteronormative \"parenthood culture.\" The first study of gay men's transitions to fatherhood, this work will appeal to a wide range of readers, from those in the social sciences to social work to legal studies, as well as to gay-adoptive parent families themselves.

Drawing on the discourse on masculinities, this article explores the positions of Czech men’s organizations related to childcare. Recently, there has been growing attention to the idea of involved fatherhood; we show that one Czech men’s organization has indeed developed a caring masculinity that aligns well with the notion of involved fatherhood. The other organizations, by contrast, have expressed strong anti‐feminist sentiments, blaming women and female‐dominated professions for their losses in divorce cases. While these groups initially emerged to demand equal custody post‐divorce—appearing to endorse gender equality—they claim to support the “traditional family,” where the man is the head of the household. Although these views seem to be contradictory, we argue they are in line with the pre‐modern view of masculinity in which the family (wife and children) was the property of the man; therefore, it was no contradiction for the father to expect the mother to be the main carer before a divorce, while demanding custody rights after a divorce.

This study investigates developments in involved fatherhood in Hungary. Drawing on the concepts of involved fatherhood and caring masculinities and recent findings on Hungarian caring fathering practices, the analysis employs multinomial logistic regression to examine Hungarian register data from 2011 and 2022. The dependent variable distinguishes between three categories: GYES (childcare allowance paid at a fixed rate), GYED Extra (childcare benefit combined with employment), and GYED Home (childcare benefit without a work commitment). Independent variables include educational attainment, marital status, regional context, employment type, and household status. A key contribution of this study was the emergence of a new group: fathers who interrupt their paid employment to care for their child, demonstrating the pluralisation of paternal roles. The sample shows that the norms of caring fatherhood have differentiated: In addition to the classical role of head of the family, there is more space for forms of care independent of work. The analysis revealed that this form of care has been spreading in Hungarian society independently of other contextual variables (region and educational attainment). These results underscore the interaction between institutional policies and evolving norms, highlighting the diversification of fatherhood models in contemporary Hungarian society.

The impact of fathers’ involvement in household tasks on fertility intentions is being both increasingly acknowledged and contested. This article adds to the evidence base by analysing the relationship between fathers’ involvement in childcare and housework and the short‐term fertility intentions of mothers and fathers in Belarus. Due to its fertility dynamics, marked by early first childbearing, low‐to‐no second childbearing, and high divorce rates, the case of Belarus presents an opportunity to revisit theoretical assumptions surrounding fathers’ involvement and their role in second‐parity transitions. Employing the results of the Generations and Gender Survey (2017) for Belarus, I performed separate logistic regressions for mothers and fathers who are fertile, aged 18 to 45, in a partnership, and have at least one child under 14 years of age in the household. The results revealed that fathers’ involvement in childcare is positively associated with the fertility intentions of the fathers, but not those of the mothers. In contrast, fathers’ involvement in housework is positively associated with the fertility intentions of the mothers, but not those of the fathers. Furthermore, education, the self‐assessed household economic situation, and employment status are associated with fertility intentions, while gender‐related values are not. The results provide partial support for the multiple equilibrium framework, but also challenge its underlying assumption that gender role symmetry drives higher fertility. Rather, the study reveals that the effects of fathers’ participation in the household are contingent on gender and the type of task, and that factors related both to gender and to economic well‐being and certainty should be considered when analysing fertility intentions.

This article aims to analyze the intergenerational transmission of parenting among Lithuanian men. Numerous studies have proven that parenting can be transmitted intergenerationally, with both supportive and harsh parenting behaviours being passed on. However, to the authors’ knowledge, there is a lack of evidence stemming from Central and Eastern European countries where, in recent decades, substantial shifts have taken place in the family gender roles and cultural scripts of parenting. Little is known about the transmission of psychological control as a parenting practice. Furthermore, most of the existing evidence on intergenerational transmission is drawn from the samples of mothers. This study is based on a large‐scale representative cohort dataset encompassing middle‐aged men born in the 1970s and 1980s ( = 1,745). This study’s main finding is the continuity of the intergenerational transmission of parenting despite major socio‐cultural shifts related to gender and family in society. We found that men’s emotionally warm fathering was linked to having experienced supportive parenting during childhood. Conversely, behavioural control in fathering was attributed to the experience of authoritarian parenting in childhood. Men’s psychological control, as a fathering practice, was associated with both supportive and authoritarian parenting experienced in childhood, although the predictive value was low. Additionally, the study revealed that men’s parenting was associated with their personality traits and parental self‐efficacy. The relationship between men’s fathering and socio‐economic characteristics was inconsistent.

Intensive parenting norms that emphasise high parental investment to optimise child development are increasingly prevalent in advanced economies. Although motherhood has been widely studied, fatherhood remains underexplored, especially in contexts like Czechia, where support for shared childcare between parents is limited. Using data from the Czech ISSP 2022 and qualitative interviews with Czech middle‐class fathers and mothers (2022–2024), this study examines how intensive parenting norms shape the views and practices of fathers’ involvement in childcare. The survey results show similar levels of support for intensive parenting norms among men and women, irrespective of expectations about paternal care. The interviews reveal three intensive parenting patterns: maternal‐specialised, stimulation‐oriented, and partially egalitarian. Although mothers bear the main emotional and logistical burden, fathers’ participation in childcare remains selective. The findings highlight how intensive parenting norms are enacted in gendered ways, shaped by persistently gendered cultural and institutional constraints.

This article explores how fatherhood is experienced by the clients of Czech family social workers, paying particular attention to how class, ethnic, and gender inequalities shape these experiences. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 11 fathers, the study employs a critical, intersectional, and structural social work perspective to analyse fathers’ narratives about their paternal identities and everyday lives. The findings reveal that fatherhood is constructed and negotiated within systemic constraints, such as insecure housing, precarious labour, and institutionalised gender norms. Fathers strive to embody the ideals of the “good” father, typically defined through breadwinning, but their efforts are undermined by structural exclusion and stigma. The study argues that paternal identity in contexts of social exclusion must be understood not as an individual trait, but as a politically and institutionally shaped phenomenon.

While multiple Western European countries have introduced leave policies that set aside well‐paid leave for fathers—policies expected to support more involved fatherhood—post‐socialist Central and Eastern European countries were slower to follow. The 2010 Slovak fathers’ leave policy reform was an early regional exception in granting fathers 28 weeks of high leave benefits, not transferable to mothers. The reform provides a unique opportunity to explore the extent to which such policies may foster involved fatherhood in a post‐socialist context characterized by practices, individual attitudes, and societal norms geared towards fathers’ economic provision rather than hands‐on childcare. I draw on a three‐dimensional conceptualization of paternal involvement, entailing engagement, accessibility, and responsibility, and a combination of methods: qualitative (38 interviews with fathers and mothers) and quantitative (unique administrative microdata). My qualitative analysis shows that fathers’ leave‐taking can stimulate greater engagement and accessibility, but brings about less change in fathers’ responsibility for children. My quantitative analysis reveals further limits to the policy’s potential for fostering fathers’ involvement: A considerable proportion of fathers were excluded from using the policy, and among those eligible, fathers with lower‐class markers were less likely to use it.