Who Benefits from the Village? Doubling Up and Parents’ Time Use

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates how doubling up, i.e., living with extended family members and other non-kin adults, shapes American parents’ time use, specifically childcare, housework, leisure, self-care, and sleep, paying particular attention to partnership status and race/ethnicity.Background: A growing body of work focuses on the reasons and consequences of doubling up (DU) and racial/ethnic variations in kinship support. However, we know little about how gender dynamics shape parents’ time use in these households and how partnership status and race/ethnicity moderate these relationships. Method: The analysis draws on the pooled American Time Use Survey (2003-2019) and a sample of American parents ages 18 to 54 (N=66,803). OLS regression models estimated the association between living arrangement and time use stratified by partnership status and race/ethnicity. Results: DU is associated with less domestic labor and more leisure time (with household members) for mothers. Partnered mothers had higher reductions in childcare, and single mothers had a greater reduction in housework across racialized/ethnic groups. Although fathers’ time demonstrated a similar general association, race/ethnicity played a greater role for fathers, and results suggest that White (single) fathers benefited most from DU. Nonetheless, results also show that fathers’ time use was mostly robust across living arrangements. White parents’ time use was consistently related to DU. Conclusion: DU offers families a strategy to navigate hardship, and it does so by supporting mothers and fathers in their gendered familial roles and maintaining general protection for fathers’ time.