Excluding the Involved Father: Having a Child During the COVID Pandemic in Iceland

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. In order to explore how parents experienced these strict COVID-19 restrictions, which prevented fathers from being present at community healthcare clinic visits, screening scans during pregnancy, and sometimes limited their participation in the birth of their child, the study conducted focus group interviews with 27 parents who had a child in 2021. 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 findings indicate that the global pandemic, with its imminent threat and crisis, led to a setback in promoting involved fatherhood. This highlights the tensions between the maternity care services driven by experts and the public’s perspectives on the needs of parents and children.