This chapter analyses factors that facilitate or hinder traditionalization in the division of work and care after childbirth, paying attention to each partners’ subjective experience of parenthood, its significance for actual practices, and its interaction with the institutional context. We draw on a sample of dual-earner couples with non-normative pre-birth plans within the Spanish context. All of them showed a favourable starting point for egalitarian arrangements in terms of relative resources, time availability, gender ideologies and domestic practices, during pregnancy. We find that couples resisting traditionalization share crucial features: (a) the mother retains a strong attitudinal work commitment; (b) the father actively supports his partner’s employment, embraces an identity as carer and makes adjustments to his own job; (c) their working conditions make it possible to share work and care equally. In contrast, those couples not fulfilling their non-normative plans are characterized by an identity and priority change.

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