Sharing the Caring: Negotiations, Satisfaction and Their Consequences

Maria Brandén, Stockholm University
Sofi Ohlsson-Wijk, Stockholm University

Although the majority of Swedish women and men believe that couples should share parental leave equally, women still use the lion’s share of the total parental leave. This mismatch between ideals and behavior has important consequences. Specifically, many individuals, in retrospect, report dissatisfaction with their division of parental leave. In this study we examine how the division of parental leave, and dissatisfaction with this division, structures (a) union dissolution risks, and (b) continued childbearing. We use Swedish panel data from the Young Adult Panel Study from 2009 and link register data on union dissolution and continued childbearing up until December 2012. Descriptive results indicate that women report higher levels of satisfaction with the division of parental leave than men do, and that being satisfied with the division of parental leave is associated with lower levels of union dissolution and higher levels of continued child bearing.