Time Allocation of Married Mothers and Fathers in Hard Times: The 2007–09 US Recession

Gender, Socioeconomic Status, and Time Use of Married and Cohabiting Parents during the Great Recession

“…Similarly, our results for mothers are consistent with the findings in the literature: mothers' primary child-caregiving time is not much affected by the recession (Berik and Kongar 2013). However, our new analysis also suggests that worsening state macroeconomic conditions are associated with different patterns of mothers' primary child-caregiving time in low-SES households compared to high-SES households, where mothers in low-SES households spend less time on primary child-caregiving activities when the unemployment rate is at 10 percent compared to when it is at 5 percent.…”

“…In sum, the results for fathers' primary child caregiving are consistent with the previous findings in the literature: fathers spend more time on primary child-caregiving activities in a recessionary context (Casper and O'Connell 1998;Berik and Kongar 2013). Similarly, our results for mothers are consistent with the findings in the literature: mothers' primary child-caregiving time is not much affected by the recession (Berik and Kongar 2013).…”

“…In the face of a male spouse's job loss, women may also take on paid work during economic crises, a phenomenon known as the "added-worker effect," leading to at least a temporary disruption and reversal of gender roles (Elson 1991(Elson , 2002Kaya-Bahce and Memis 2013;Rubery 1988). There is evidence of an added-worker effect in the US, Canada, and the European economies during the Great Recession (Berik and Kongar 2013;Karamessini and Rubery, forthcoming;Şahin, Song, and Hobijn 2010;Starr 2014). However, in the US, data on the time use of household members other than the respondent to the ATUS are not available, and the impact of the recession on patterns of the within-household gender division of unpaid labor are inferred from comparisons of nationally representative trends for coupled (married or cohabiting) women and men who reside in the same household as their spouse or unmarried partner (Berik and Kongar 2013;Kaya-Bahce and Memis 2013).…”

“…There is evidence of an added-worker effect in the US, Canada, and the European economies during the Great Recession (Berik and Kongar 2013;Karamessini and Rubery, forthcoming;Şahin, Song, and Hobijn 2010;Starr 2014). However, in the US, data on the time use of household members other than the respondent to the ATUS are not available, and the impact of the recession on patterns of the within-household gender division of unpaid labor are inferred from comparisons of nationally representative trends for coupled (married or cohabiting) women and men who reside in the same household as their spouse or unmarried partner (Berik and Kongar 2013;Kaya-Bahce and Memis 2013). 3 In the year 2012, 64 percent of married-couple families with children under the age of 18 were dual-income families with two employed parents (Glynn 2014: 5).…”

“…The decline in paid work hours due to job loss or underemployment during the recession allowed for time to be spent on Aguiar, Hurst, and Karabarbounis (2013) explore how the "surplus time" in US labor markets during the recession was reallocated across unpaid work, leisure and personal care activities, and other categories of time use, and found that both women and men allocated more than half of their foregone paid work hours to leisure activities, and about onethird to unpaid housework and care work activities. For married or cohabiting opposite-sex parents in the US, Berik and Kongar (2013) examined the impact of the recession on gender differences in time use over the 2003-10 period through a gender lens and found evidence of an increase in mothers' paid work burden during the recession, while fathers increased the time they spent on child-caregiving activities. Morrill and Pabilonia (2015) examined the time opposite-sex married or cohabiting couples who have children spent together over the 2003-10 period and found that couples spend more time together when the state unemployment rate is low, but couples' time together increases at very high unemployment rates.…”