For better or worse: How more flexibility in working time arrangements and parental leave experiences affect fathers' working and childcare hours in Germany

Abstract

Objective: In this study, we investigate the effect of flexible working time arrangements and parental leave experiences on the actual working and childcare hours of men.
 Background: Many fathers want to spend more time with their children and actively participate in family life, but, after becoming a parent, most work even more hours than before. To better combine work and family, the possibility of flexible working time arrangements might play a crucial role for fathers, also to become more involved in childcare activities.
 Method: We use longitudinal data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to examine how flexible working time arrangements, parental leave experiences, working hours, and childcare hours are related. Based on data between 2013 and 2019, panel regression models were estimated.
 Results: The results show that a change from fixed to flexible working time regulations leads to an increase in working hours for men and fathers. The longer working hours of fathers go hand in hand with a reduction in the time spent on childcare activities when switching to flexible working time arrangements. However, experiences with parental leave in connection with flexible working hours show a change in the use of time.
 Conclusion: Flexible working time regulations prove to be ambivalent for fathers: On the one hand, they offer fathers new leeway, on the other hand, due to traditional role models, they lead to longer working hours and thus less participation in childcare; but parental leave experiences make a difference, which indicates the importance of these regulations for fathers.

Underemployment and overemployment in Central Europe

“…These are particularly linked with the EU LFS survey design and usage of only one particular year of survey data (Campbell and van Wanrooy, 2013), not allowing for tracking working hours preferences over time and providing longitudinal evidence. The longitudinal datasets could also be explored by alternative methodological approaches, especially by estimating the multinomial logistic regressions, and tracking over time whether respondents mitigate the discrepancies or not (Zimmert and Weber, 2021;Wanger and…”

Teleworking through the gender looking glass

“…Expectations about fathers' and mothers' roles are likely to affect the way in which teleworking might reduce or heighten gender inequalities in housework (Kurowska, 2018[34]). Similarly, firms' managerial and organisational cultures are likely to matter (Gálvez, Martínez and Pérez, 2011 [35]): teleworking leads to less work-life conflicts in firms where it is normalised, as indicated by the number of workers using the option (van der Lippe and Lippényi, 2018 [36]). Importantly, while teleworking might be reproducing pre-existing inequalities in work-life balance, there is no evidence that gender inequalities in housework are worsened by it.…”

Working longer with working-time flexibility: Only when job commitment is high and family commitment is low?

“…Even after childbirth, women's work commitment has been found to remain stable over the life course (Moen & Smith, 1986;Mulvaney et al, 2011)-with small changes especially in the first years of motherhood (Evertsson, 2013). To account for changes in job commitment due to the birth of a child and related childcare experiences (Wanger & Zapf, 2022) and difficulties combining work and family (Evertsson, 2013;Mulvaney et al, 2011), the present analyses compared women and men with different parental status, and controlled for the age of the youngest child (see also section 3.2.5 "Control variables")-a factor that affects work-family conflict. The limitation that potential work-induced changes in job and family commitment, such as the experience of unemployment, could not be taken into account, is discussed in Section 5.…”

“…In the United States, for example, fathers work fewer hours on average than their childless male counterparts (Weinshenker, 2015). For Germany, fathers with experience of parental leave have been found to increase their work hours less when working flexibly (Wanger & Zapf, 2022). Because mothers still take on the greater share of housework (van der Lippe et al, 2011), they (have to) identify more with the family role, and are expected to do so also at the workplace, as has been found for the United States and Germany (Lott & Klenner, 2018;Leslie et al, 2012).…”