Formal rights vs real opportunities: Father’s experiences of (non)take-up of parental leaves in Poland

Poland has extended fathers' parental leave rights considerably in the last decade. In 2013, 26 weeks of well-paid shareable parental leave were introduced. In 2023, an additional nine weeks of a non-transferable entitlement to paid parental leave for fathers were added to meet the EU Work-Life Balance Directive requirements. Nevertheless, both in 2013 and in the 2023 reform, some peculiar elements in the Polish parental leave system have been added that promote maternal leave use during the entire first year after the child’s birth. Moreover, the system is embedded in a rather traditional culture, casting mothers as the proper carers and fathers as family breadwinners, particularly when the child is under 3 (Heinen and Portet, 2009; Saxonberg 2014; Javornik and Kurowska 2017). All this may seriously hinder fathers' use of parental leave entitlements. This paper will present the results of 30 individual, semi-structured interviews with Polish fathers conducted between December 2023 and February 2024 in Poland. Employing these interviews, we aimed to explore Polish fathers' considerations, beliefs and experiences regarding using their formal rights to parental leave. In our study, we will pay particular attention to the role of the newly implemented, non-transferable paid leave for fathers. Setting the analysis in the Capability Approach perspective (Kurowska 2018, Kurowska and Javornik 2019), we aim to shed light on diverse institutional, cultural and economic barriers fathers in Poland face to take advantage of their formal entitlements. We will also explore conditions in which fathers overcome these barriers and successfully take advantage of their rights.