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Resumo

Despite the consensus that fatherhood is undergoing significant change, there is little known about how men who are deeply engaged in caregiving experience the shift away from conventional models. Examining the use of parental leave by Canadian fathers offers the opportunity to study the day-to-day reality of men's caregiving and how time with baby may be transformative. In-depth interviews with 33 men reveal that all participants developed parenting skills and emotional bonds, yet only fathers who parented without a mother's oversight articulated a sense of ownership and accountability over their child's care. Those personally moved by the leave experience were most likely to integrate caregiving into their identities, provided they felt 'accomplished' in their employment. Leave-taking thus represented an important liminal period in which fathers could 'test the waters' of hands-on childcare without threatening their sense of self, ultimately increasing the visibility of men as caregivers and reshaping cultural configurations of acceptable masculinity.

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