Exploring mothers’ attitudes towards fathers’ uptake of parental leave in Malta

Abstract

The scope of this qualitative research is to explore mothers’ attitudes towards the notion of fathers’ uptake of parental leave in light of the European Union Work Life Balance Directive which is to be transposed to Maltese law by 2022. This study builds on Allen and Hawkins’ ‘Maternal Gatekeeping’ phenomenon, which stresses the mother’s influential role in the father’s involvement in the care of the care of the children. More specifically, this study seeks to explore how mothers influence the fathers’ uptake of parental leave. In their role, mothers can either encourage or hamper the father’s confidence in his parenting skills and his involvement in caring responsibilities. Structured interviews were conducted with eight female participants. All participants were career mothers who hold a managerial position with children up to the age of eight. A thematic analysis approach was adopted to analyse the data collected (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This study shows that although incentivising policies, such as periods of parental leave quotas reserved exclusively for the father, can help increase fathers’ uptake of parental leave, additional cultural and gendered barriers may inhibit the effectiveness of such policies. For instance, traditional gender roles seem to be still very much present within the Maltese family unit. Here, the mothers, whilst assuming greater responsibilities in child caring, believe that their ability to care for the children is superior to that of the father. Because of their low trust in the caring abilities of the father they seemed reluctant to let go of the care of the children, especially when the children are very young. These tendencies are likely to hamper and lower the father’s involvement in child caring and the likelihood of them taking up parental leave. Therefore, it is fundamental to look at the perceptions and the expectations of the mother and her influencing role in the decision making process of the fathers in relation to the uptake of parental leave.