The Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland) are known as the most gender-equal countries in the world. This is true for governmental policies, the labor market, and education, as well as for family life. National politics and government policies reflect a long-standing commitment to reduce inequality in the number of men and women in political bodies and in powerful positions in workplaces and other organizations. The state is also committed to reduce inequalities and asymmetries in spheres of life such as the care of small children, access to and payment for paid work, and access to healthcare, as well as to reduce women's risk of sexual victimization. These aspirations have been accompanied by many practical governmental policies and other measures to achieve equality, as well as by an overarching ideology about what the good life for women and men should look like. However, some spheres of life have changed more quickly than others. Life in families composed of a man and a woman and their children seems to be especially slow to change. For instance, although fathers and mothers now have equal rights to paid parental leave to care for their small children, the overall pattern in the Nordic countries is that women use most of the days of parental leave. In 2009, for instance, Swedish fathers used only 22 percent of the total available paid parental leave days (Swedish Social Security Agency, 2010). Also, although nearly as many women as men work outside the home, women usually have the overall responsibility for the household and child-care, and they do substantially more of the housework and child-care than men do (Statistics Sweden, 2010).

Why is it that even in the Nordic countries, where national ideologies strongly promote such change, movements toward equality in family life are so slow? To learn more about the dynamics of change and resistance to change, feminist researchers have studied how different conceptions of parenthood, in conjunction with ideologies about equality, femininity, and masculinity, influence women's and men's ways of understanding themselves as parents and partners (Aarseth, 2008; Bekkengen, 2002; Bengtsson, 1985, 2001; Dryden, 1999; Eriksson, 2003; Holmberg, 1993). The researchers have been especially interested in the cultural discourses that shape how men and women think and feel about themselves as mothers, fathers, spouses, partners, and workers.