Presentation at the FamiliesAndSocieties Final Conference, Brussels, 17/10/2016
New Articles (*SSCI)
*Schmidt Eva-Maria, Zartler Ulrike, Rieder Irene (2018). Interrelated Parenting Practices: Conceptual Foundations of Involvement in Care Work at the Transition to Parenthood. Families, Relationships and Societies. Forthcoming.
Abstract:
Numerous studies have explored parents' unequal involvement in care work, emphasizing the formative power of the first period of parenthood. However, detailed knowledge of how care work is interlinked between parents in everyday practice during the transition to parenthood and how these linkages are related to gendered inequality is limited. Based on an Austrian qualitative longitudinal study with first-time parents (66 individual interviews with 11 couples during pregnancy, six and 24 months postpartum), we developed a typology of parental involvement in care that captures the relationality of parents' practices, their fluidity over time and embraces six types of interrelated parenting practices. Results show how parental involvement is constituted by a complex interplay and sequence of parenting practices performed by both parents. With regards to gender inequality in care work, we demonstrate that parents are thus situated on a continuum between equality, dichotomy, ambiguity and inequality when doing care work. The results systematize the tremendous variety of parents' interrelated involvement in care work.
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Oláh Livia S., Kotowska Irena E., Richter Rudolf (2018). The New Roles of Men and Women and Implications for Families and Societies. In G. Doblhammer & J. Gumá (Eds.), A Demographic Perspective on Gender, Family and Health in Europe (pp. 41-64). Cham: Springer Open.
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*Schmidt Eva-Maria, Rieder Irene, Zartler Ulrike, Schadler Cornelia, Richter Rudolf (2017). Turning points in the transition to parenthood: Variability of father involvement over time. Zeitschrift für Familienforschung/Journal of Family Research, 2-2017, 139-155.
Abstract:
Although fathers’ involvement in care work has increased, the transition to parenthood still implies a gendered division of labour. In order to gain more knowledge of this ambivalence, we focus on the variability of father involvement at this transition. Based on an Austrian qualitative longitudinal study with couples experiencing the transition to first-time parenthood, we examined how fathers’ affective, cognitive and behavioural involvement varies across the transition process. Changes in fathers’ involvement culminated at particular points in time, conceptualised as turning points. Results show that the transition to fatherhood is characterised by a variety of prepregnancy, prenatal and postnatal turning points at which father involvement undergoes crucial transformations. Father involvement varies not only between fathers, but also within individual transitions. The study indicates that turning points contribute to the dynamics and fluidity of the transition process.
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*Vogl Susanne, Zartler Ulrike, Schmidt Eva-Maria (2017): Developing an Analytical Framework for Multiple-Perspective, Qualitative Longitudinal Interviews (MPQLI). International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(2), 177-190.
Abstract:
Collecting multiple perspectives data (e.g. from related individuals) in a qualitative longitudinal design can provide rich understanding of the dynamics at play in complex relational systems, and the different perceptions of people involved. However, such approaches are inherently challenging due to the complexity and volume of data involved. So far, little attention has been paid to the methodological challenges of data analysis in multiple perspectives longitudinal research. This paper contributes to the development of a systematized analysis process for multiple perspectives qualitative longitudinal interviews (MPQLI). We present a framework for handling the complexity and multi-dimensionality of MPQLI, describing discrete steps in such analyses, and related aims and insights. We exemplify the suggested strategies with our own research on the transition to parenthood. The proposed framework can increase both traceability and credibility of analysis of MPQLI, and help to realize the potential of multiple perspectives longitudinal interviews.
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Schmidt Eva-Maria (2017). Breadwinning as care? The meaning of paid work in mothers’ and fathers’ constructions of parenting. Community, Work and Family. Online first.
Abstract:
As some scholars have argued for a distinct conceptualisation of breadwinning and for understanding breadwinning as a form of care, this study addresses parents’ constructions of breadwinning and its connections to care. It is based on an in-depth interpretive analysis of multiple-perspective, qualitative longitudinal interviews with 22 Austrian mothers and fathers from three points in time during their transition to parenthood. The analysis revealed four different types of breadwinning concepts by considering the jointly constructed meaning of mothers’ and fathers’ paid work within a parental couple and further relied on Tronto’s conceptualisation of care as a four-step process. The results indicate that respondents construct a clear difference between earning money and breadwinning. Additionally, a difference is made between breadwinning and taking care of the family’s subsistence, predominantly so for mothers. In conclusion, breadwinning can definitely be considered a form of care and thus a form of involvement in parenting, but it cannot be regarded a form of involvement in caregiving. The holistic picture of parents’ joint constructions enabled us to contribute to the existing conceptualisations of breadwinning and of parental involvement, thus providing a novel perspective on matters of gender equality.
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*Schmidt Eva-Maria, Rieder Irene (2016). Alles eine Frage des Geldes? Elterliche Legitimierungsmuster bei der Organisation und Verwirklichung der Karenzzeit [All About the Money? Parents’ Justification Patterns Behind their Parental Leave Arrangements]. SWS-Rundschau 4/2016.
Abstract:
Research considers the transition to parenthood the key transition in the reinforcement of unequal and gendered division of labor between women and men. In Austria, parents are provided with an optional and flexible system of parental leave and childcare benefit during this time of income loss. The article at hand thus analyses how mothers and fathers before and after the birth of their first baby justify and rationalize their arrangement of parental leave, no matter if they share parental leave and childcare benefit or not. The analysis is rooted in a qualitative longitudinal study where 66 interviews with mothers and fathers at three time points were conducted. As a result, four central rationales and aspects of justification were identified: economic, employment-centered, child-centered and parental role-specific. In combination with each other, couples justifications can be characterized by specific patterns that are strongly underpinned by powerful social ascriptions of gendered differences between mothers and fathers.
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*Schadler Cornelia, Schmidt Eva-Maria, Rieder Irene, Zartler Ulrike, Richter Rudolf (2017). Key practices of equality within long parental leaves. Journal of European Social Policy 27(3).
Abstract:
The birth of a child often reinforces an unequal division of employment and care work among heterosexual couples. Parental leave programmes that foster long leaves tend to increase this inequality within couples. However, by investigating a particularly long parental leave system, we show that specific practices enable parents to share care work equally. Our ethnographic study includes interviews with heterosexual couples, observations in prenatal classes and information material available to parents. Specific sets of practices – managing economic security, negotiating employment, sharing information with peers and feeding practices – included parents that shared care work equally and parents that divided care work unequally. Contingent on specific situated practices, the arrangement of care work shifted in an equal or unequal direction. Even within long parental leaves, equality between parents was facilitated when economic security was provided through means other than income, when work hours were flexible, mothers had a close relationship to work, information on sharing equally was available and children were bottle-fed. Consequently, the relations between the human and non-human participants of situated practices come into focus. An equal share of care work is not the effect of solely structural, individual, cultural or normative matters, but of their entanglement in practices.
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Schmidt Eva-Maria, Rieder Irene, Zartler Ulrike, Schadler Cornelia, Richter Rudolf (2015). Parental Constructions of Masculinity at the Transition to Parenthood: The Division of Parental Leave among Austrian Couples. International Review of Sociology 25(3).
Abstract:
Men and masculinity are considered a key factor in changing gender inequality at the transition to parenthood. Prior research on gendered division of parental leave concentrated on fathers’ perspectives. This paper includes perspectives of fathers and mothers who make use of parental leave in different ways and asks how masculinity is jointly constructed, how these constructions are linked to the use of parental leave, and if and how they are oriented towards hegemonic masculinity. The analysis is based on 44 qualitative interviews with 11 Austrian couples before and after birth when decisions concerning parental leave were made. Our case reconstructions reveal that parents considered parental leave a central element of masculinity as long as it suited fathers’ needs and circumstances permitted. The decisions for sharing parental leave were fathercentred as both partners valued father’s leave higher than mother’s.
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Schadler, Cornelia (2014): Key practices of the transition to parenthood: The everyday figuration of parents' and children's bodies and personalities through the lens of a new materialist ethnography. Current Sociology, 61/1, 114-131
Abstract:
At the transition to parenthood humans become parents or children. Sociology traditionally defines the transition to parenthood as the attainment of a new role or a new cultural identity. Recent new materialist redefinitions of the human and human relations have consequences for the empirical and conceptual view on the transition to parenthood. Parents and children become figurations within material-cultural practices. Their bodies and personalities solidify in those processes. Research from this perspective has often focused on the conception and birth of children (and parents) within techno-scientific practices (e.g. IVF). The research presented here focuses on everyday material-cultural practices during the transition to parenthood to explicate how parents and children are produced during the transition to parenthood. This article gives detailed descriptions of four key practices that allow humans to gain the status of parent or child: gaining evidence over an existing pregnancy, the normalization of the foetus and the parents, the sexing of the child and the official registration of the child. These situated practices form ‘real’ parents and children and their living conditions.
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Cornelia Schadler published a book on the transition to parenthood, entitled 'Becoming Father, Mother and Child: A Posthumanist Ethnography about Pregnancy' at transcript.
