Swedish women have improved their labor market position over time, and women’s earnings today are a substantive part of family income. However, women still take the greater part of domestic responsibilities. Becoming a parent is a critical moment when mothers reduce their paid work hours, leading to widening earnings differentials between partners. Given significant changes in labor market opportunities and gender ideologies, this study asks whether men and women’s employment responses to childbirth have become more symmetrical over time. To date, little work has addressed trends across cohorts and trends over time within couples. This study contributes to closing that gap, expanding our understanding of how couples negotiate roles following childbirth. Further, we explore potential differences in how change has evolved among subgroups of the population, in particular, among couples with different socio-economic backgrounds. With the unparalleled resource of Swedish register data, we follow couples who have had their first child during 1985–2007 and map their earnings trajectories starting 2 years prior to birth and up to 8 years after.