Nordic Fathers and Family Policies- the Quest for the Caring Father

The Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are known for their extensive welfare states. An important component of the Nordic welfare state is the support provided to parents providing and caring for their children. All the Nordic countries have since the 1990s developed policies that aim at encouraging fathers in caring for their young children by giving individual entitlements to fathers, both paternity leave that the fathers do share with the mothers and individual entitlements to paid parental leave that can only be used be the father. However, the countries have chosen different paths and provided different volumes of leave earmarked for fathers. The paper compares the contemporary policies and outcomes. Finally the importance of the policies for the construction of fatherhood is discussed.