1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The aim of this study is to contribute to the literature on fathers’ use of parental leave and to explore the impacts of reserved paternity leave and conjugal union type on how parents share the uptake and duration of leave.» (p. 234)

Questions/Hypothèses :
Authors formulate among others the following hypotheses: «Fathers are more likely to take parental leave in Quebec, which offers non-transferable paternity benefits, than in other provinces. […] Married fathers are more likely than cohabiting fathers to take parental leave in both Quebec and the other Canadian provinces.» (p. 222)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
This «study uses the General Social Survey (GSS) on families conducted by Statistics Canada in 2011. The target population of the survey included all individuals 15 years of age and older living in Canada, excluding residents of three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) and residents of institutions. [Authors] retained only respondents living with their spouses or cohabiting partners and excluded 224 divorced, separated, or single individuals for whom we had incomplete information about the other parent of the child. [The] original sample comprised 806 male and 909 female respondents who belonged to 1715 couples.» (p. 223)

Instruments :
Questionnaire

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«[A]nalysis shows that among couples who had a child in the five years prior to the survey and in which at least one parent took leave, the probability of fathers taking leave was approximately three times higher in Quebec than in other provinces, and this result holds after controlling for couples’ characteristics. The result confirms our first hypothesis and emphasizes the importance of reserved paternity leave in encouraging fathers to spend time with their newborns. As observed in previous studies and predicted in our second sub-hypothesis, our analysis shows that married fathers were more likely to take parental leave than their cohabiting counterparts. However, when we allowed the impact of conjugal status to vary across regions, we found the gap between married fathers and cohabiting fathers to be narrower—in fact, non-existent—in Quebec, even though it remained large and significant in other provinces. In other words, in Quebec, unlike in the other provinces, cohabiting fathers appear to have adopted married fathers’ behaviors, at least in terms of parental leave uptake.» (p. 234)