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Significant changes regarding work and family patterns in post-industrial societies have rocked the foundations of the gendered division of labour in family life. Nevertheless, the focus of attention has thus far mainly been on women's roles and entitlements, and has not implied a parallel focus on men's roles as fathers and caregivers. This article redirects attention to the role of men as fathers by exploring the economic incentives for fathers to take up parental leave in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden). It also highlights the great variety of circumstances relating to education and jobs among fathers. It constructs a more ‘realistic’ representation of the material conditions facing families with children through an in-depth policy analysis that takes into account not only public leave schemes but also the private layer of welfare entitlements for broad categories of workers, representing different socio-economic groups and employment sectors. The results indicate that there are different economic incentives for fathers to take up parental leave across countries - with Sweden being the most ‘father-friendly’ – as well as class-based and sector-based inequalities within countries. In-depth policy analysis of public and private layers of welfare entitlements reveal dissimilarities in access to participation in family life between fathers in the Nordic countries.

Occupational stress has immense economic and health-related consequences for individuals, organizations, and societies. In this context, the question of whether and how stress among managers transmits to their subordinates is highly interesting, yet not profoundly researched. This study aims to empirically investigate the effect of manager occupational stress on the development of subordinate stress and for how long such effects last in time. We exploit a unique panel dataset based on three different surveys among employees from a large Danish municipality, covering 5,688 employees and their 473 immediate managers between 2016 and 2020. We analyze this data using a fixed effects estimator with clustered robust standard errors, allowing us to significantly reduce potential endogeneity issues. The study shows that managers do in fact ‘transmit’ stress onto their employees, that the relationship is detectable a full year after the initial transmission of stress occurred, and that such an effect fades within additional two years. Our study serves to emphasize the great importance of the psychosocial wellbeing of managers as ‘nerve centers’ for entire job teams and urges organizations to treat stress among personnel on management levels with a high degree of concern.

Occupational stress has immense economic and health-related consequences for individuals, organizations, and societies. In this context, the question of whether and how stress among managers transmits to their subordinates is highly interesting, yet not profoundly researched. This study aims to empirically investigate the effect of manager occupational stress on the development of subordinate stress and for how long such effects last in time. We exploit a unique panel dataset based on three different surveys among employees from a large Danish municipality, covering 5,653 employees and their 452 immediate managers between 2016 and 2020. We analyze this data using a fixed effects estimator with clustered robust standard errors, allowing us to significantly reduce potential endogeneity issues. The study shows that managers do in fact ‘transmit’ stress onto their employees, that the relationship is detectable a full year after the initial transmission of stress occurred, and that such an effect fades within additional two years. Our study serves to emphasize the great importance of the psychosocial wellbeing of managers as ‘nerve centers’ for entire job teams and urges organizations to treat stress among personnel on management levels with a high degree of concern.