Couples’ Parental Leave Practices: The Role of the Workplace Situation

We address the issue of the relationship between couples’ parental leave practices and their workplace situation in a Nordic family policy setting described as both generous and gender egalitarian. The most common practice is that the father makes use of a mandatory fathers’ quota and the mother uses the rest of the total of 12 months of paid leave. There is little limitations in parents’ workplaces for fathers use of the father’s quota. Parental leave practices involving couples where the father is taking longer leave than the father’s quota and thereby the mother taking shorter leave compared with those taking maximum, are associated both with mothers’ workplaces and fathers’ workplaces. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012