Caring Is Sharing? Couples Navigating Parental Leave at the Transition to Parenthood. By KatherineTwamley, London: UCL Press, 2024. 241 pp. £45 (hardcover); £25 (paperback). ISBN: 978‐1‐80008‐741‐5

Nancy Fraser's (1994) framework for the universal caregiver model is often cited as a path toward greater gender equality, emphasizing a more equitable division of paid labor, housework, and caregiving. In Caring is Sharing?, Twamley provides a rigorous contribution to this debate, examining how couples negotiate decisions around sharing parental leave at the transition to parenthood, how leave-taking shapes long-term patterns of caregiving, and more broadly, whether shared parental leave (SPL) can serve as a catalyst for gender equality. Twamley, a Professor of Sociology at UCL Social Research Institute, describes how her own experience of first-time parenthood piqued her academic interest in SPL, a policy which allows a portion of the 12 months of maternity leave to be transferred between parents (distinct from the 2-week paternity leave period). Facing high childcare costs and precarious academic employment, she became acutely aware that leave negotiations are more complex than SPL legislation suggests. In this research, she investigates the many factors and influences which shape how parents make these decisions. Employing a longitudinal qualitative panel design, Twamley follows twenty-one UK-based, mixed-sex, dual-earner couples who are eligible for SPL, from pregnancy through the child's first 18 months. Twamley uses surveys, diaries, and individual and couple interviews with the first-time parents, conducted when the mother was 8 months pregnant, and at 6 and 14–18 months postpartum. A second phase of the study intends to revisit the couples when the children are 10 years old. Applying a narrative method of analysis, Twamley used participant responses and stories to identify themes and meaning. The narratives illuminate the internal, intimate negotiations around care between couples, allowing a better understanding of “the lived experience of leave” (p. 11) and its consequences for men and women. Part 1 (Chapters 2 and 3) explores eligible couples' decision-making around parental leave prior to the birth of the child, comparing 11 couples who did not share leave (“non-sharers”) with 10 couples who did (“sharers”). Part 2 (Chapters 4 and 5) documents the experiences of both groups through the 12-month period of leave. In Part 3, Twamley categorizes families into three typologies based on their caregiving arrangements after the initial parental leave: seven couples comprising breadwinning fathers and primary carer mothers (Chapter 6); six sharer couples with the mother functioning as a “household manager” (Chapter 7); and five couples who divide paid and unpaid work evenly (Chapter 8). She concludes by evaluating SPL's ability to promote greater gender equality and makes policy recommendations for improvement. Twamley's contributions to the literature lie in her exploration of the relational nature of decision-making, the persistent influence of gender roles in limiting the impact of shared leave policies, the tensions between paid and unpaid work, and the often-overlooked costs of sharing leave. Twamley's study offers a critical examination of the decision-making process around parental leave, challenging dominant (economic) narratives of bargaining power and individualized rational choice. Drawing on initial interviews as the mothers were 8 months pregnant, she demonstrates how parental leave decisions are relational and cocreated, navigating complex social and emotional landscapes, and shaped by partners' perceptions of each other's needs, both explicitly stated and imagined. One interesting example of this complex, relational decision-making involved a couple who had cited financial affordability as the justification for not sharing leave. During the pre-birth interview, the father revealed, apparently for the first time, that his workplace offered both paid parental leave and managerial support to take it, making his leave more affordable than the mother's. Despite this, Twamley observes how the couple co-constructed a narrative throughout the remainder of the study that reaffirmed their original division of leave, perhaps as an act of gender conformance, or to reduce potential conflict in their intimate relationship. This persistence may also reflect an observer effect, as the presence of the researcher could have shaped how participants accounted for their choices over time. In addition to the relational decision-making between couples, Twamley demonstrates how social norms and peer behaviors influence decision-making, drawing on examples of couples referencing their families, friends, and coworkers as role models which shaped their own leave decisions. Twamley applies this relational lens to the ways partners discuss and make decisions based on economic factors. She shows that although economic rationale plays an important role in shaping choices, decisions are not purely “economically rational,” but are entangled with gender roles and the performance of gender. Like the example cited above, even where no financial incentive exists to justify fathers not taking leave, many couples still rationalized a more traditional split of labor. Twamley remains critical of the oft-held notion that higher earning power allows one to negotiate their way out of doing care work, as this line of argument can imply that the desire of all parents is to spend as little time as possible with their children. Instead of seeing higher earnings as a means to opt out of care work, Twamley frames higher maternal earnings as being able to lower the cost for men to take on more caregiving responsibilities and expand their role as a parent. This is demonstrated in the study cohort: among nonsharers, none of the mothers earned more than their partners, whereas in the sharer group, only one father out-earned the mother. Although economic factors did play a significant role for most couples in the cohort, they operate very differently for men and women. She observes this gendered behavior in how individuals used earnings as a bargaining chip: although many men in the cohort justified the division of leave based on their higher earnings, higher-earning women rarely referenced their earnings in discussions about shared leave, engaging instead in gender-conforming negotiations. Twamley's research demonstrates how pervasive gender roles and social norms can be in shaping behaviors and decisions around caregiving and how these cannot be overcome by policy alone. Twamley ties this to gendered notions of the moral responsibility of motherhood and fatherhood. For many of the participants in the study, this morally prescribed vision of “good motherhood” meant a type of intensive mothering, where the mother is not only the primary caregiver, but demonstrates an expert level of knowledge of all aspects of child rearing, all which requires an intensity of time. In contrast, many men in the study performed or described what Twamley calls “intimate fathering,” where fathers develop an intimate bond with the child that is independent of time commitment, freeing them up to pursue paid work without underperforming in fatherhood (p. 42). Twamley posits that “the moral responsibility of fatherhood is not comparable to that of motherhood. Men do not hold, and nor are they held to, expectations of perfect parenting in the same way as women” (p. 114). Drawing on examples from the study subjects, she demonstrates how Claudia Goldin's theory of “greedy work” (2021) can be applied both to professional settings, where the ideal worker remains incompatible with caregiving, and to intensive mothering, which reinforces mothers as primary carers. Twamley offers some interesting insights into how men and women navigate the balance between paid and unpaid work. Although men frequently expressed concerns about how leave would impact their career trajectories, the issue “barely figured” in women's accounts (p. 39). Instead, Twamley shows how women's long-term career planning often made it more practical or financially feasible for them to take the full leave entitlement and that a career break was often an expectation rather than a choice. She draws on Schmidt (2018) to illustrate how men often viewed paid work as part of their caregiving role, seeing breadwinning as their moral responsibility as a father. In contrast, women never described their paid work as a form of care work but rather as personally fulfilling, highlighting a gendered economy of work, where men's financial contributions are framed as care, whereas women's caregiving as well as their potential as breadwinners remains largely ignored within economic frameworks. Through individual and combined interviews with the partners, Twamley demonstrates the trade-offs involved in shared caregiving for both parents. Although the career costs of motherhood are widely studied, Twamley draws attention to the lesser-explored professional sacrifices made by fathers in more egalitarian partnerships. Twamley observes that most fathers in the group which shared care evenly expressed lower career ambition than those in the other groups. One father reflected that his “life is more challenging than that of his male colleagues who had not taken leave” (p. 184). Drawing on Schwartz (1994), Twamley contends that true equality within couples requires career progression to take a back seat, a shift that can impose “identity costs” (p. 185) on men who deviate from traditional masculine expectations, just as women may struggle to meet ideals of intensive motherhood. Can SPL contribute to more equitable parenting and gender roles, and advancing the universal caregiver model? When evaluating fathers' experiences of leave, Twamley finds that the experience of taking leave alone not only results in fathers growing more confident and competent in their roles as carers but in increased empathy and understanding between parents, more collaborative decision-making about childcare, and strengthened intimacy between couples. She uses these examples to suggest how a direct engagement with caring can give a more nuanced understanding of the burdens and joys of care work. Referencing Joan Williams' (2012) argument that transformational change in family dynamics requires the restructuring of workplace norms, Twamley highlights how a normalization of men taking leave can challenge the hegemony of paid work and increase the social valuation of care work. Achieving this, she argues, requires secure employment and well-paid parental leave. Twamley acknowledges the limitations of her sample, which is predominantly cisgendered, university-educated, white-collar professionals, and largely white. Although this narrow demographic constrains the generalizability of her findings, they shed light on the challenges of achieving gender equality even among highly privileged groups. Although she suggests that the barriers faced by more marginalized parents are likely to be greater, the absence of working-class, queer, or racially marginalized perspectives limits the study's ability to explore how structural inequalities intersect with SPL uptake and experience. Although all studies must limit their focus, further research incorporating these perspectives would offer a more comprehensive account of the policy's varied impacts. It is also worth considering how Twamley's own positionality may have influenced aspects of data collection and interpretation. Twamley's work provides necessary insights into the “nitty gritty” human experience behind the highly praised but often idealized policy of SPL. Drawing on her data, Twamley unpacks the intricacies and intimacies of leave decisions for new parents, positioning them within the ongoing policy debates around parental leave and gender equality. Although her research highlights the potential of SPL to increase gender equality through a greater sharing and appreciation of care work, she draws attention to the many hurdles in the uptake of the policy. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers. Twamley's use of interview and diary excerpts, woven together with analysis, creates a compelling and accessible narrative, and her included methodological notes make the book valuable for those less familiar with qualitative research. Teachers and students may find it an engaging deep-dive into the lived, on the ground experiences of policy, whereas prospective parents may appreciate its insights into different models of parental leave and household sharing along with the language to articulate their own decision-making processes. I would particularly recommend this book to fellow economists for both its methodological contribution and its challenge to dominant notions of homo economicus and rational choice theory. Twamley presents compelling evidence for a more relational model of decision-making, offering an insightful perspective for those interested in rethinking economic assumptions about work, care, and family life. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.