The Transition to Motherhood and Fatherhood and Its Impacts on the Everyday Life and Identity of an Individual

This article monitors the transition of women and men to their first-time parenthood based on their own accounts. It is based on longitudinal research that observed sixteen heterosexual couples from pregnancy and over several years after the birth of their child. The analysed interviews made up the second wave of the research and were conducted when the first-born child was one and a half to one and three-quarters years old. While the women described their transition to motherhood as crucial, significant and clear, the transition to fatherhood was rather bland, gradual and hazy in men’s narratives. The mothers depicted the impacts of parenthood on their everyday life as great and often pervasive, while the fathers tended to see them as minor or even nonexistent. The difference in mothers’ and fathers’ accounts is interpreted as a consequence of different conceptions of identities by women and men and their gender roles. While motherhood is an important part of femininity and for this reason it is an important central identity for women, the hegemonic concept of masculinity does not include fatherhood; it is the work identity that is the central identity of both men and fathers. The distinct roles of the mother as caregiver and the man as breadwinner contribute to the fact that the men usually do not describe their transition to fatherhood, in the first two years after childbirth, as a significant life turning point.