Why Do Women Generally Care More Than Men? Processes of Bargaining and Interaction in the Transition to the First Child -- CANCELLED

This paper studies dual-earner couples in their transition to their first child. We perform a qualitative analysis on longitudinal and semi-structured interviews –both individual and couple- gathered in 2011 and 2013 in Spain. This case study is part of the international TransParent study. In this piece of research we compare how the couple intends to care for the baby, before birth, and how the couple’s members describe having shared the care during the first and a half year of life of the baby. How do men and women think about their care involvement during pregnancy and how do they come up either with more symmetric or more traditional care arrangements afterwards? What distinguishes quasi-symmetric from asymmetric care-sharing couples: their relative resources and employment contexts or their gender and care attitudes? This paper analyses resources in a large sense: from relative income, job security, job sector, job organization principles and work careers to relations with peers and the family. Results show that resources in a large sense matter as a necessary condition for a symmetric share of care, but the key to understand real outcomes is the form of the bargaining process and the mix of gender and care attitudes within the couple.