Klaipėdos universitetas

A man living in an ultramodern society is increasingly questioning the meaning of his own existence, which is closely related to the finding of the answer of his own identity and the understanding of his place in the family and the society. In this process the very important place goes to the question of males self-realization in the labor market and to the way how a woman enters in to the labor market. The relationship between these two protagonists – the man and the woman – and the correlation of that relationship is what brings the man or the father to identity crises. The influence of the labor market is one of the most important factors contributing to identity crises in the sphere of been a male and in the sphere of being a woman. In this article we will analyse the changes of the ultramodern society, which have their connection with the transformations in the labor market and their influence on the men and the fathers of the ultramodern society.

This article analyzes paternal time allocation with children in Lithuania and explores paternal and spousal cross effects in time investment. Effects of paternal health status, alcohol consumption and health insurance status on paternal-child time allocation are also examined. The research finds a modest after-tax family income effect for paternal time, but not when examining paternal-spousal cross effects for child time investment. Regarding paternal-spousal cross effects, while both are very highly significant statistically, this research finds almost twice the complementarity for the Lithuanian paternal hour with children for spousal time with children than for a spousal hour for paternal time with children. The paper identifies several possible factors in the Lithuanian context contributing to a complementary effect and away from a substitutionary effect. Spousal age and educational effects – the former negative, the latter positive – are found for spousal time allocation with children but not found significant paternally. To our knowledge this is the first study to examine paternal time allocation in Lithuania for children including health status, alcohol consumption, insurance status and paternal/spousal cross effects for time allocation with children. Compared to our previous research, it also supports caution against assuming that parental cross effects on time allocation in a Lithuanian social context mirror such in the U.S.