The State as a Norm-Builder? The Take-up of Parental Leave in Norway and Sweden Christina Bergqvist a and Steven Saxonberg b a Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden b Department of Social Policy & Social Work, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic and Department of European Studies and International Relations, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia Abstract This study shows that although Norway and Sweden have rather similar family policies, the seem- ingly small differences that exist reflect different national ideals of care, and these differences encour- age parents to employ different gendered moral rationalities. However, Sweden’s ideal of ‘equal- sharing/professional care’, encourages fathers to take longer leaves than the Norwegian ideal of ‘partial sharing plus choosing between professional or parental care’. Given their different national ideals of caring, different gendered moral rationalities emerge. While in Norway the dominant gen- dered moral rationality among our interviewees is ‘man-doing-his-duty’, in Sweden two different rationalities arise: the ‘breastfeeding-plus-sharing’ rationality and the ‘male-opt-out’. This conclu- sion is based on 60 interviews with mothers and fathers in Oslo and Stockholm. Keywords Parental leave; Parental sharing; Family policies; Norms; Gender equality Introduction The Nordic countries have come a long way towards a dual-earner/dual- carer model. In the 1970 s, the Nordic countries began introducing such reforms as paid parental leave and publicly-funded childcare services to increase gender equality. By making it possible for parents to share parental leave and by expanding access to public childcare, mothers and fathers of small children have greater possibilities of being able to combine work and family in an equal way (e.g. Ellingsæter 1998 ; Haas and Rostgaard 2011 ). This study focuses on Norway and Sweden, whose policies and economic incentives are rather similar (see table 1 ). However, there are some interesting Author Emails: Christina.Bergqvist@statsvet.uu.se; sax@post.utfors.se SOCIAL POLICY &ADMINISTRATION ISSN 0144-5596 DOI: 10.1111/spol.12251 VOL. ••,NO. ••, •• 2016, PP. ••–•• © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd