Becoming a Dad: First Births and Attitudes Towards Fathering

Definitions of what it means to be a ‘good’ father are changing. In the mid-twentieth century fatherhood was defined in economic terms and emphasised men’s responsibilities as ‘providers’. More recently, greater weight is placed on men’s involvement in day-to-day family matters and their hands-on roles in mentoring and providing physical and emotional care to their children. Despite this, evidence still shows that women continue to take the primary responsibility for childcare, in particular when children are young. Previous research has found that key life-course events, such as the birth of a child, a marriage or divorce or completing education, may change an individual’s gender-role attitudes. Understanding how attitudes towards the role of a father change with life course transitions, in particular the birth of a first child, is integral to gaining better insights into what motivates fathers to increase their participation in childcare, as well as understanding the stability of attitudes within individuals over the life course. We examine how the birth of a first child influences attitudes towards fatherhood amongst men and women using panel data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Our results indicate that gender-role attitudes are not fixed over individuals’ life courses and thus provide support to intra cohort theories of attitudinal change. In particular, we find that after experiencing a first birth women become less likely to agree that a father should be as heavily involved as in the care of his children as the mother, and men become more likely to question the capacity of a working father to have a good relationship with his children. We argue that these changes reflect the primary identities of men and women as ‘providers’ and ‘carers’ following a first birth.