Cross-national Variation in the Influence of Employment Hours on Child Care Time

Abstract

Parental time investments in children are essential inputs in children's present and future well-being. The ability of parents to make choices about child care time that are free from money and time constraints varies considerably, however, by employment status and country. We use nationally representative time diary data from nine countries with different gendered working time regimes to investigate how employment hours influence child care time, and whether parents in countries with high maternal employment rates, long work hours among mothers and fathers, and limited family policies have a deficit in child care time. We instead find that child care hours are lowest among French and Swedish mothers, and among French fathers, countries with relatively high parental employment rates but also short work hour cultures. We document a range of employment penalties on child care time among employed mothers and fathers in English-speaking countries and Slovenia, and smaller or no penalties among parents in the Netherlands and Nordic countries. Findings suggest employment associations with child care are not only mediated by gendered work hour cultures, but also culturally distinct parenting ideologies.

Work, parenting and gender: the care–work negotiations of three couple relationships in the UK

“…As stated earlier, a family which has one full-time worker and one part-time worker has been characterised in work-family literature as a 1.5 worker family (Sayer and Gornick, 2012). To reiterate, Michala is a full-time care professional.…”

“…Consequently, this trend of part-time working hours has a knock-on effect that women will also tend to earn less income through paid-work. Working practices within the UK have been termed 1.5 worker families (Prince Cooke, 2011;Sayer and Gornick, 2012) which refer to a family with one part-time worker and one full-time worker, with typically the mother taking on the part-time role. Despite gender mainstreaming commitments within EU policy directives, UK policy compares poorly by reinforcing traditional gendered caring and working constructs of mother as primary carer and father as breadwinner worker (Sigle-Rushton and Kenney, 2004).…”

Change in the Gender Division of Domestic Work after Mummy or Daddy Took Leave: An Examination of Alternative Explanations

“…Previous research has shown that women who are currently on leave or not employed on average perform more and their partners less unpaid work compared to women who work part-time or full-time (e.g., Gershuny et al 2005, Brines 1994, Sayer and Gornick 2012, Craig and Mullan 2011. A few analyses of domestic work time differentiated between short-term and long-term unemployment (Brines 1994, Burda andHamermesh 2009) or considered women's full-time work experience (Cunningham 2007) and generally lend some support to the importance of past labour market experiences.…”

Parents’ Involvement in Childcare

“…In contrast, because of the persisting view of good fathering in terms of good breadwinning, there is little to no societal ambivalence towards new fathers' employment. This is reflected in the relatively small variability in fathers' working patterns (Sayer & Gornick, 2012), which leaves less room for fathers' identities in guiding their behaviors.…”