Full-time versus part-time employment: Does it influence frequency of grandparental childcare?

Abstract

The impact of grandparents' employment on grandparental childcare has been examined repeatedly, but the findings have so far been inconsistent. We contend that these inconsistencies may have resulted from variations in model specification and crude measurement of employment status. Furthermore, we assert that earlier research overlooked gender differences in the ability to combine paid employment and caregiving as well as variations between maternal and paternal grandparents. We also question the causal interpretation of earlier findings that were based on cross-sectional data. We revisit the issue of the impact of the intensity of employment and analyze SHARE data from 19 countries. We find a significant positive association between part-time employment (as compared to full-time employment) and the frequency of grandparental childcare in a cross-sectional sample, but only among paternal grandmothers. Capitalizing on the panel component of SHARE, we use a within-person estimator to show that this association is unlikely to reflect a causal effect of the intensity of labor market attachment on the frequency of the care of grandchildren, but more probably results from omitted variable bias. We argue that grandparents most likely to provide (intensive) childcare are also most likely to adjust their employment in anticipation of caregiving. The paper documents the usefulness of role strain theory among grandparents and highlights that part-time jobs may reduce role conflict and may thus make grandparenting a more easily manageable experience.

Care-giving to grandchildren and elderly parents: role conflict or family solidarity?

“…Working grandparents are generally willing to care as frequently as non-working grandparents, but with less intensity (Attias-Donfut, Ogg and Wolff 2005; Gray 2005; Hank and Buber 2009). Lakomý and Kreidl (2015) suggest that some grandparents tend to reduce their employment in order to provide care for their grandchildren and grandparents tend to retire earlier (Hochman and Lewin-Epstein 2013; Van Bavel and De Winter 2013). Besides the position in the labour market, there is also the effect of education: highly educated grandparents tend to care for their grandchildren more than grandparents with a lower education (Baydar and Brooks-Gunn 1998; Silverstein and Marenco 2001).…”

Does Transition to Retirement Promote Grandchild Care? Results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

“…According to the model of need and opportunity structures, intergenerational transfers are shaped by the recipients' need for support and givers' opportunity to provide help (Szydlik, 2016). While parents with young children tend to have need for child care help, the opportunities of older adults to provide grandchild care is often highly dependent on their labour force status (Lakomy & Kreidl, 2015). Based on the role strain theory, multiple social roles can be a source of a role conflict because one may not have enough resources, such as time, to fulfil responsibilities related to all of them (Goode, 1960).…”

Grandmothers and Non-grandmothers in the Polish Labor Market: The Role of Family Issues

“…This, for example, explains why gender pension gap is few times higher than gender pay gap. 1 Also, while both grandmothers and grandparents are involved with their grandchildren, the levels of grandparental care are much higher among grandmothers (Hank & Buber, 2009; Lakomý & Kreidl, 2015). This gender gap in grandparenting exist even if both grandparents are in full-time employment (Leopold & Skopek, 2014).…”

“…While grandparental caregiving and the consequences of providing intensive care to grandchildren have been studied extensively (e.g., Hank & Buber, 2009; Lakomý & Kreidl, 2015; Leopold & Skopek, 2014), relatively less attention has been paid to the ways in which grandparenthood itself may affect the labor market participation. The differential effects of grandparenthood on labor market activities in later life have raised interest among researchers only recently, and the research has mainly focused on exploring the linkages between grandparenting and retirement.…”