The limited increase in fathers’ involvement in childcare tasks in response to the unprecedented rise in female labour market participation illustrates the incomplete nature of the gender revolution. Available research provides evidence for micro-economic mechanisms and the influence of gender norms and social policy design on couples’ gendered divisions of parental leave, but knowledge on how national level contexts shape partners’ agency remains limited. Hence, comparative research from different national contexts is needed. This paper examines the association between fathers’ pre-birth income and workplace characteristics, and whether they take up parental leave after the birth of their first child in Belgium and Sweden by using detailed longitudinal register data from Sweden and Belgium. Results show that, whereas an opportunity cost logic seems to underlie fathers’ parental leave decisions in Belgium, gender equality in contributing to the household income yields the highest probability of fathers’ parental leave uptake in Sweden. Furthermore, in Sweden, fathers’ employment characteristics are more strongly associated with whether fathers’ take leave longer than the quota than whether fathers take any leave at all. The different mechanisms in Belgium and Sweden suggest that the design of leave policies and the broader normative and institutional national level context moderate couples’ parental leave uptake decisions.

Although young couples increasingly divide paid and unpaid work equally, the transition to parenthood is associated with the production of gender inequality. Given the rising prevalence of female breadwinner households in Europe, this paper assesses whether the parenthood effect on gender inequality in employment is counteracted in couples where women were the main income providers before the onset of family formation.Using longitudinal micro-data (1999-2010) from the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security and the National Register, population-averaged logit models assess the effect of pre-birth relative earnings on parental employment strategies following the transition to parenthood. Results indicate that a female main earner constellation positively relates to egalitarian and female-oriented employment strategies. Although pre-birth relative earnings affect the magnitude of the negative relationship between parenthood and gender inequality in paid work, male-oriented parental employment strategies continue to occur most, even among female main earner couples. Hence, variation in pre-birth relative earnings cannot fully account for the rise in gender inequality in employment following the transition to parenthood, suggesting that cultural as well as structural factors limit parents to opt for an egalitarian employment division.

In recent decades, many Western European countries introduced parental leave policies to support the work–family combination in families with young children. However, these parental leave schemes often exhibit employment‐based eligibility criteria, so the question arises to which extent social inequalities emerge in the access to parental leave, and as a result thereof also in the uptake of parental leave. Although research on parental leave increasingly addresses the issue of inclusiveness, only a limited number of studies has yet examined individual‐level differentials in parents’, and especially mothers’, eligibility. Using detailed register data, we develop an individual‐level indicator of eligibility in Belgium and deploy it to document differentiation in mothers’ eligibility by age at first birth, partnership status, migration background and education. In addition, we examine to what extent differential eligibility can explain inequalities in parental leave uptake. Our results show that a considerable share of mothers—specifically very young, single, low educated mothers and mothers with a migration background—do not meet the eligibility criteria and thus are structurally excluded from parental leave in Belgium. Furthermore, differential eligibility can account for a large part of the age and educational gradients in parental leave use, as well as differences by migration background. Eligibility cannot (fully) account for lower parental leave use by single mothers and mothers with a Moroccan or Turkish migration background. Our findings suggest that a reconsideration of eligibility criteria may be instrumental in increasing the inclusiveness of parental leave policies.

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Bien que les pays occidentaux aient connu un développement sans précédent du modèle des couples à double revenu, l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes sur le marché du travail reste insuffisante : la division du travail rémunéré entre les sexes continue d’être inégale après les naissances, et les congés parentaux sont très largement pris par les mères. À l’aide de données de panel basées sur des registres belges pour la période 1999-2010, nous évaluons l’influence des caractéristiques d’emploi relatives des conjoints avant l’arrivée d’un enfant sur les situations d’emploi et de prise de congé après la naissance. Les résultats des modèles logit multinomiaux soutiennent l’hypothèse microéconomique selon laquelle le membre du couple ayant le salaire le plus élevé, la plus longue expérience, et réalisant le plus d’heures de travail avant la naissance a le moins de probabilité de quitter le marché du travail. Peu d’éléments étayent l’hypothèse selon laquelle les modalités sexospécifiques des prises de congés seraient liées à des coûts d’opportunité moins élevés des conjoints ayant des salaires plus faibles ou un accès plus facile aux congés parentaux. Enfin, les simulations indiquent qu’au niveau macro, l’impact des caractéristiques d’emploi avant la naissance n’est pas assez fort pour aller au-delà des inégalités de genre post-naissance, particulièrement pour le recours au congé parental qui reste fortement lié aux normes sexuées et aux institutions.