When conservative parties propose policies for caring fathers: Policy-framing analysis of parental leave reforms in Germany and Japan

Sammanfattning: Parental leave policies for fathers are introduced to promote father’s caregiving and gender equality in childcare. Even though the majority of father-friendly policy reforms were led by social democratic parties, a few conservative catch-all parties also proposed policies to promote father’s caregiving. How did conservative catch-all parties frame father’s caregiving when they propose policy reforms that can contradict their conservative party ideologies? To address this question, the study draws on Verloo’s Diagnosis-Prognosis framework for the policy-framing analysis. Statements of the conservative politicians were collected from parliamentary, ministry and party documents and analysed mainly by the qualitative framing analysis combined with frequency analysis. While the findings show contrasting policy-framing patterns, both parties successfully framed father’s caregiving as compatible with conservative interests. This study contributes to our understanding of conservative framing strategies on policies for father’s involvement in childcare as this is the first comparative analysis of policy-framing on father’s caregiving by conservative catch-all parties. My study presents an analytical framework that can be applied by other researchers of parental leave policies for a more systematic comparative analysis.