Two articles published this year by Expresso (here and here) highlight an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, there has been a recent strengthening in Portugal of incentives for sharing parental leave (i.e., taken by both mothers and fathers, for example): an increase in the total number of days at home with a newborn (from 120 or 150 days to 180) and the salary during this period when the father takes 60 days of leave (from 83% to 90%). However, despite this clear policy incentive, there has been a decrease in the use of leave by men in 2023 (49.6% in 2023; 47.6% in 2024). This seems paradoxical: adding more benefits to a behavior should, intuitively, increase its occurrence. What is observed, however, is that, despite being well-intentioned and relatively generous, this policy has a limited or zero impact — suggesting that the barriers are not material, nor simple cost-benefit analyses. Sometimes, the barriers are social, which demonstrates that the design of public policy of this nature must take the social context into account, aiming to anticipate identity and cultural obstacles.
Why, despite strengthening policies supporting shared parental leave, is the number of men taking this leave decreasing?
As with everything related to human behavior, the reality is complex, multi-causal, and often counterintuitive. Some more obvious explanations involve gender stereotypes. Here, we are entirely in the realm of social psychology. Stereotypes are socially shared, and in the case of gender, there are, for example, beliefs and expectations regarding the distinct roles of men and women in family life.
Stereotypes are socially shared and, in the case of gender, there are, for example, beliefs and expectations regarding distinct roles for men and women in family lifes.
Social psychology offers several theoretical models and applied research on stereotypes and their content. For example, according to the Stereotype Content Model, we find that the “typical woman” is seen as warmer than competent, positioned similarly to the “housewife” and far from the “career woman”; in turn, the “typical man” is seen as more competent than warm, positioned next to the “manager” and the “career man.” Furthermore, when a woman becomes a mother, the “career woman” is seen as warm but no longer as competent — meaning that for a woman, being a mother involves trading competence for affability, in terms of how peers perceive her. For men, becoming a father does not require any trade-off; instead, warmth is added to their competence — meaning that a man loses nothing in the professional context in terms of how his professional abilities are perceived. The consequence is obvious and detrimental to women: when it comes time to employ, promote, or train someone, who would prefer someone they see as having lost competence?
If a man does not trade his aura of competence for warmth when becoming a father, merely adding both, why not share parental leave? The professional cost seems to lie with mothers; yet, they are the ones who predominantly take the leave.
The explanation lies in the social and identity dimension of men in Portugal: the cost of adding warmth to competence is, after all, being seen as “less of a man.” Even in everyday life, we see signs of this reality: consider the use of the term “man” in everyday language. “Be a man” is used to suggest that one should be strong, able to face adversity; “you’re not man enough for that” suggests that accepting difficult challenges, sometimes associated with risks, is expected of a man. We never hear “be a woman” or “you’re not woman enough for that” in these circumstances, which informs us about the content of the male stereotype: bravery, toughness, courage. Engaging in counter-stereotypical behaviors puts our belonging to the group at risk. This is illustrated in the Expresso articles, with quotes like “There are guys who act like they were the ones who gave birth to the baby.” This is an example of the cost associated with stereotypical behavior, of which taking parental leave as a father is an example.
This idea is supported by extensive research over the past decades. In an assessment of what situations men consider stress-inducing, five categories stand out:
- Physical inadequacy (e.g., not being in good physical condition, being unfavorably compared to other men, being perceived as having feminine traits);
- Emotional expression (admitting fear of something; comforting a friend; being seen crying by children; talking to a woman who is crying);
- Subordination to women (having a female boss; letting a woman control a situation; marrying a woman who earns more; admitting to friends that one does housework);
- Intellectual inferiority (asking for directions; being told one is indecisive or too emotional; staying at home during the day with a sick child);
- Low performance (being unemployed; not earning enough money; unsatisfactory sexual performance).
This cost is compounded by the constant need for maintenance, so that masculinity is not questioned by others. In short, and also supported by empirical evidence, it is something “hard won and easily lost“.
The situation seems to be circular and without an exit: measures encouraging the sharing of parental leave aim for gender equality; at the same time, it is the very reality we want to change that resists any change, leading to the ineffectiveness of the measures adopted. But it is exactly this social context that must be taken into account when designing public policy on this issue.
The data prove this: the Expresso articles compare us to Sweden, where parental leave is seen as more beneficial for men. But what do the data more broadly tell us about the issue?
We see that 95% of Swedes fully agree that it is acceptable for a man to cry, but only 41% of Portuguese agree with this (EU average: 51%).
We know that as early as 2005, 48% of Swedes strongly disagreed that men are better “business executives,” and that this percentage increased to 72.3% in 2017. In stark contrast, only 29% of Portuguese held this opinion in 2020.
The enviable Swedish situation today regarding the use of parental leave results from decades of public policies designed to address the broader issue of gender equality. Another example in this regard, but in a more challenging social context, is the Ikumen Project launched in Japan — a country where paternal involvement with family was so low that, on average, in the 1980s, a man interacted with his children for only 40 minutes a day, including mealtime. The goal of this project was to promote father-child engagement through a redefinition of gender roles. A campaign was conducted involving seminars, workshops, educational material, and media appearances, addressing the central issue of “masculinity” and “fatherhood.” The result was an increase in male participation in parental leave from 1.9% to 7% between 2012 and 2017.
Our conclusion is that the ineffectiveness of the policy implemented in Portugal may well result from a reductive view of the problem. By not being integrated into a more comprehensive policy, the failure to foresee how beliefs and cognitions about gender roles would be an obstacle to the objectives of public policy has made it entirely ineffective.
These beliefs, cognitions, and behaviors are the object of study of social psychology, an area dedicated to understanding how human behavior results from a complex system of causal factors, leading to decision-making that does not follow a rational algorithm, and how internal phenomena are determining. Consequently, public policies that interact with the population, whether to inhibit or motivate behaviors, are at risk if they limit themselves to objective economic benefits or rely on isolated legislation, without incorporating knowledge from the field of social psychology about what leads people to act — or not act.