Experts Meeting: Home and Engaged Fatherhood
Paper: Fathers-to-be and paternity leave: 5 things men should know

Margaret O’Brien is Emeritus Professor of Child and Family Policy at UCL’s Social Research Institute. She is Co-Chair of the EU-funded COST research project Parental Leave Policies and Social Sustainability (2022-2026) and was Director of UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit between 2013-2021.  She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the LSE and is a trained Clinical Psychologist.  Professor O’Brien has published widely on fatherhood and child well-being was part of the first wave of fatherhood research in the 1980s (The Father Figure, 1982; Reassessing Fatherhood, 1987). Professor O’Brien has served as a UK member of the International Network on Parental Leave Policy and Research since 2004, as well as participating in many other national and international advisory boards including the UN experts group preparing for International Year of the Family where she contributed to the first UN report Men in Families and Family Policy in a Changing World Report. She currently serves on the UK Government’s Academic Advisory Group on its national Parental Leave & Pay Review.