Excluding the involved father: Having a child during the COVID pandemic in Iceland
Author(s): Sunna Simonardottir, Ásdís Arnalds
Thursday 15 | 10:00-10:20
Room: TP45
Session: Parenting in the Nordic countries
Iceland has prioritized the importance of active fatherhood through the implementation of public policies that encourage men to be actively involved in caregiving. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, fathers in Iceland were excluded from various aspects of maternity care as a measure to reduce the spread of the virus. Prenatal care guidelines in Iceland changed dramatically as COVID-19 spread through the population in March of 2020. The policies changed rapidly based on the fluctuations of the infection rate, so for most expectant mothers in 2021, partners were not allowed to accompany them to antenatal visits and screening scans. The exclusion of partners from the ultrasound examination was intended to protect staff with specialised skills. For some prospective parents, the birth itself was also subject to extreme COVID-related measures, including partners not being able to be present until the mother was in active labour, having to use face masks in the delivery room, and partners having to leave the hospital once the baby was born. In order to explore how parents experienced these strict COVID-19 restrictions, the study conducted focus group interviews with 27 parents who had a child in 2021. The focus group interviews were transcribed verbatim and subsequently analysed by both authors utilizing thematic analysis methods.
The participants in the focus groups perceived pregnancy and birth as a shared experience that both parents were equally invested in. Consequently, most of them took proactive measures to ensure that fathers could be present despite the restrictions. The process of labour and childbirth is a significant life event for both parents. While the findings clearly emphasise how pregnancy and the act of giving birth has been constructed as a “couple event”, in which fathers and other partners have a supporting role and start to form a bond with their child, they also reveal obstacles to involved fatherhood in Iceland. While shared parenting has been constructed as the proper model, pregnancy and the early stages of parenting are in many ways still preserved for mothers. By investigating parents’ experiences and reactions, the study reveals important cracks in the façade of shared parenting ideologies in Iceland, a country that has been labelled the most gender-equal country in the world. The results contest the strong preferences of both parents’ involvement in infant care, set forth by state policies, and present a culture of ambivalence towards father’s role during pregnancy and early childhood. Thereby, the results highlight the need for implementing policies that facilitate inclusion for fathers as important and active participants in their own right.