Chapter 1: Fathers on Leave Alone: Setting the Scene: Margaret O’Brien and Karin Wall -- Chapter 2: The Ethics of Care and the Radical Potential of Fathers ‘Home Alone on Leave’:  Care as Practice, Relational Ontology, and Social Justice: Andrea Doucet -- Chapter 3: Fathers on Leave Alone in Norway: Changes and Continuities: Elin Kvande and Berit Brandth -- Chapter 4: Fathers on Leave Alone in Portugal: Lived experiences and Impact of Forerunner Fathers: Karin Wall and Mafalda Leitão -- Chapter 5: Fathers on Leave Alone in Québec (Canada): the Case of Innovative, Subversive and Activist Fathers !: Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and Nadia Lazzari Dodeler -- Chapter 6: Fathers on Leave Alone in Finland: Negotiations and Lived Experiences: Johanna Lammi-Taskula -- Chapter 7: Fathers on Leave Alone in Spain: ‘Hey, I want to be able to do it like that, too’: Gerardo Meil, Pedro Romero-Balsas and Jesús Rogero-García -- Chapter 8: Fathers on Leave Alone in Sweden: Toward more Equal Parenthood?: Ann-Zofie Duvander, Linda Haas and Sara Thalberg -- Chapter 9: Fathers on Leave Alone in Iceland: Normal Paternal Behaviour?: Ingólfur V. Gíslason -- Chapter 10: Fathers on Leave Alone in the UK - a Gift Exchange between Mother and Father?: Margaret O’Brien and Katherine Twamley -- Chapter 11: Fathers on Leave Alone in France: Does part time parental leave for men move towards an egalitarian model ?: Danielle Boyer -- Chapter 12: Fathers on Leave Alone in Switzerland: Agents of Social Change?: Isabel Valarino -- Chapter 13: Fathers on Leave Alone in Japan: Lived Experiences of the Pioneers: Hideki Nakazato -- Chapter 14: Discussion and Conclusions: Karin Wall and Margaret O’Brien.

Open Access

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book portrays men’s experiences of home alone leave and how it affects their lives and family gender roles in different policy contexts and explores how this unique parental leave design is implemented in these contrasting policy regimes.   The book brings together three major theoretical strands: social policy, in particular the literature on comparative leave policy developments; family and gender studies, in particular the analysis of gendered divisions of work and care and recent shifts in parenting and work-family balance; critical studies of men and masculinities, with a specific focus on fathers and fathering in contemporary western societies and life-courses. Drawing on empirical data from in-depth interviews with fathers across eleven countries, the book shows that the experiences and social processes associated with fathers’ home alone leave involve a diversity of trends, revealing both innovations and absence of change, including pluralization as well as the constraining influence of policy, gender, and social context.   As a theoretical and empirical book it raises important issues on modernization of the life course and the family in contemporary societies. The book will be of particular interest to scholars in comparing western societies and welfare states as well as to scholars seeking to understand changing work-life policies and family life in societies with different social and historical pathways. .