The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated significant adjustments to the paid work and domestic arrangements of many working parent couples. Childcare demands increased due to school/nursery closures and couples were unable to see extended family, who, as we saw previously, many had relied on for childcare support. At the same time, people's working lives were disrupted, as some became legally obligated to work from home while others were expected to be physically present in their place of work, meaning working parent couples often needed to divide paid work, childcare, and housework differently. There was a good deal of optimism that changes to paid work during the pandemic presented a unique opportunity to reimagine and reshape gendered divisions of domestic labour, particularly where men were concerned (Carlson et al, 2022; Craig, 2020).

This chapter seeks to contribute to these discussions through revisiting the lives of ten parent couples that I originally interviewed, with the aim of exploring how these couples’ experiences of working and caring for their children had changed since we had last spoken, but also specifically during the pandemic and beyond. I was interested to know whether the effect of the pandemic had altered how couples reconciled paid work and the home, their domestic divisions of labour and the men's fathering identities, in particular, which, as we saw in the preceding chapters, was significant in shaping who carried out specific household tasks.