Overview

The open access book provides a critical account of parenthood in Polish society. It uses a qualitative perspective to show how mothers and fathers engage with parenthood and also function in the labour market. Parenting in contemporary Poland is not only affected by individual preferences and choices, but significantly by the institutional context, in particular the family policy system, as well as socio-cultural norms of how men and women should fulfill parental roles. The author distinguishes between different kinds of work done in connection to parenthood and shows how the existing institutional system reinforces gender and other forms of social inequalities even in a post-communist state like Poland. The author demonstrates that Polish society has different expectations and institutional norms related to work and gender norms compared to those in long-standing democracies in Europe and elsewhere. The book also shows that the experiences of parenthood in Poland are different between men and women, between single and coupled parents, and based on economic and other resources. This book is of interest to social science students and researchers of family studies, parenting, sociology of work, and social structure in post-communist societies.   

Full Product Details

Author:   Katarzyna Suwada
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2021
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9783030663025

ISBN 10:   3030663027
Pages:   107
Publication Date:   08 January 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1.    Introduction 2.    Parenting, work and gender. Sociological perspective 2.1. Introduction 2.2. Parenting and social change 2.3. Parenting as work in a sociological perspective 2.4. Parenting and doing gender 2.5. Parenting and the welfare state system 2.6. Chapter summary 3.    Care work and parenting 3.1. Introduction. Culture of care in Poland 3.2. ‘I can’t imagine my husband on parental leave’. Parental leave as a mother’s right 3.3. ‘Nurseries are so expensive…’. Care gap and organisation of care after parental leave 3.4. ‘I’m a bit down…’. Loneliness and exhaustion in care work 3.5. Chapter summary 4.    Paid work and parenting 4.1. Is paid work a part of parenting? 4.2. ‘It’s clear that it’s also a financial issue…’. Necessity of paid work 4.3. ‘I think that a guy has to earn and support his family’. Different attitudes to paid work of mothers and fathers 4.4. ‘Time is the biggest problem in my life’. Time pressures in parenting 4.5. Chapter summary 5.    Domestic work and parenting 5.1. Prevailing inequalities in the household 5.2. ‘I try to help as much as I can’. Men and domestic chores 5.3. ‘I just don’t want to force him’. Women as managers of everyday life 5.4 ‘I think it is fair’. The sense of fairness and gender roles 5.5 ‘We have a lady coming once a week’. Strategies of reducing domestic duties 5.6. Chapter summary 6. Conclusions: power relations and parenting

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Author Information

Katarzyna Suwada is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. She defended her PhD in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland in March 2015. She has published Men, Fathering and the Gender Trap. Sweden and Poland compared (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Currently, she is conducting research on parenthood experiences of Polish mothers and fathers. She is particularly interested in how they combine parental obligations with paid work in the context of gender and economic inequalities. Beside parenthood, her research focuses on masculinities, gender relations, the sociology of families, social inequalities, feminist theories and methodologies. She is an author of three books and multiple articles in sociological journals. She is a member of the executive board of the Research Network 13 “Sociology of families and intimate lives” of the European Sociological Association, a member of the executive board of the Section of Gender Sociology of the Polish Sociological Association. She is also an associate editor of the Journal of Family Studies.

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