Introduction

Modern families face a range of challenges as they seek the right balance between working and family life. … Just as mothers have sought equality in access to employment, fathers increasingly want to combine work with time spent fulfilling childcare responsibilities. (House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee, 2017) It has been widely acknowledged within existing literature that there are numerous benefits to both children and parents to fathers taking an active role in the caregiving of their children (Levtov et al., State of the world’s fathers: A MenCare advocacy publication. Promundo, Rutgers, Save the Children, Sonke Gender Justice, and the MenEngage Alliance, 2015; Burgess & Davies, Cash or carry? Fathers combining work and care in the UK. Fatherhood Institute, 2017; Parkes et al., Growing up in Scotland: Father-child relationships and child socio-emotional wellbeing. Scottish Government, 2017; Cano et al., A matter of time: Father involvement and child cognitive outcomes. Journal of Marriage and Family, 81(1), 164–184, 2019). Nevertheless, caregiving fathers have been observed to face numerous challenges as they attempt to take an active role in the caregiving of their children. This book identifies such challenges as ‘fatherhood forfeits’ and presents existing literature in this area alongside empirical data to explore the experiences and perceptions of caregiving fathers in the workplace. This chapter outlines the drivers that prompted this research and its importance is explored. It then moves to discuss how the role of father is changing and it is suggested that despite this context of purported change, a climate of minimal actual change prevails. It concludes by outlining the structure of the book and the methods employed within the empirical data collection.