The preceding chapters have explored how men's fathering identities and women's attitudes, in conjunction with the terms and conditions of their respective public and private sector employment and workplace cultures, shape how partners divide childcare and housework. In this final chapter the overall findings and conclusions from this longitudinal study are considered and their implications for our understanding of paid work, unpaid work, families, and gender are explored.

The significance of time and visibility

As discussed in Chapter 2, since the 1970s the UK public sector has not always provided a shining example of model employment, however, research has suggested a supportive approach to working parents in some respects through the favourable application of parental leave (Rubery, 2013) and the availability of reduced hour contracts, flexitime, or home working (Lewis et al, 2017). This has been considered to have established more opportunities for working parent couples to better combine demands of paid work and home. However, as this book has shown, this is not necessarily the case. Earlier chapters show inconsistencies in how paternity leave policy is applied across public and private sector work settings and how some of the lowest paid paternity leave is in public sector areas such as the fire service and police. This reinforces normative understandings of fathers as providers rather than carers, thereby sustaining breadwinner fathering identities which, as we have seen, have consequences for how household tasks are divided.