Reconciling Earning and Caring in the Curious Case of Sweden

Despite the gender-neutral and comprehensive set of family policies available to Swedish parents we see in Sweden clearly gendered patterns of behavior, labor market structures, and earning outcomes. This paper uses a feminist institutionalist approach aiming to contribute to the discussion of why that is by proposing a clearer conceptualization of work family reconciliation, a focus on how formal institutions are perceived, and the analytical separation of an economic dimension and one of good parenthood as tools for studying the mechanisms that create gendered outcomes of formally gender-neutral policies. Based on 13 semi-structured interviews with 7 heterosexual couples it seeks to identify where and how in the Swedish system of formal and informal institutions work-family conflict is created and gendered. The results indicate that mothers’ and fathers’ care are measured on different scales, where the latter is an economic question while the former is a one of good parenting – something that cannot be measured in economic terms. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the Swedish childcare guarantee for providing a suitable care solution for dual-earner families is limited by a perceived incompatibility between good parenting and leaving children in institutional childcare for long enough to enable full-time work. Gendered perceived expectations on mothers and fathers mean that mothers are more likely to perceive such a conflict and the consequential pressure to shift time from earning to caring. Taken together the results contribute empirically to an understanding of the mechanisms that gender work-family conflict despite gender-neutral policies, and theoretically in illustrating the added value of studying how the perception of institutions affect behavior and in this case gendered outcomes.