Trends in Mothers' Parenting Time by Education and Work From 2003 to 2017 (original) (raw)
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This study investigates the relationship between maternal employment and state-to-state differences in childcare cost and mean school day length. Pairing state-level measures with an individual-level sample of prime working-age mothers from the American Time Use Survey (2005–2014; n = 37,993), we assess the multilevel and time-varying effects of childcare costs and school day length on maternal full-time and part-time employment and childcare time. We find mothers’ odds of full-time employment are lower and part-time employment higher in states with expensive childcare and shorter school days. Mothers spend more time caring for children in states where childcare is more expensive and as childcare costs increase. Our results suggest that expensive childcare and short school days are important barriers to maternal employment and, for childcare costs, result in greater investments in childcare time. Politicians engaged in national debates about federal childcare policies should look to existing state childcare structures for policy guidance.
Changing Trends of Mothers’ Active and Passive Childcare Times
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2012
This paper explores how mothers' allocation of types of time with children and the determinants of this allocation have changed during 1981-1997 in the United States, using Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study and Family Interaction, Social Capital and Trends in Time Use. Data reveal that active time with children has increased for the case of educated working mothers with young children.
Time Use of Parents in the United States: What Difference Did the Great Recession Make?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
Feminist and institutionalist literature has challenged the "Mancession" narrative of the 2007-09 recession and produced nuanced and gender-aware analyses of the labor market and well-being outcomes of the recession. Using American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data for 2003-12, this paper examines the recession's impact on gendered patterns of time use over the course of the 2003-12 business cycle. We find that the gender disparity in paid and unpaid work hours followed a U-shaped pattern, narrowing during the recession and widening slightly during the jobless recovery. The change in unpaid work disparity was smaller than that in paid work, and was short-lived. Consequently, mothers' total workload increased under the hardships of the Great Recession and declined only slightly during the recovery.
Journal of Comparative Family Studies , 2016
This paper uses the 2010 General Social Survey in Time Use (Canadian time diary data, N = 1,932) to examine the gender gap in parental time allocated to childcare for families at different stages indicated by ages of children. We suggest that the general increase in fathers’ time with children matters little as long as a substantial gender gap remains. We analyse how the gender gap in weekday childcare time varies at different life stages of parenting. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is used with weighted time use averages to compare childcare time allocations of mothers and fathers from couples in which at least one person works full time. We argue that the analysis of the childcare gender gap during the week is the most indicative of changing or persistent gender roles. Our results suggest fathers allocate the most time to childcare at the youngest stages of the family. However, the differences in mean characteristics do not account for the entire gap. Gender differences, and the unexplained proportion of the differences, decrease markedly as children leave toddlerhood. The decomposition analyses suggest that market forces and family characteristics do not fully explain the gap in childcare time with the exception of the passage from toddlerhood. We suggest the fluctuating gap is consistent with childrens’ age-linked traditional gendered family role expectations. The decomposition approach contributes to our understanding of gendered division of labor in parenting by counterfactually analyzing the gap beyond the father and mother characteristic differences.
No Time for College? An Investigation of Time Poverty and Parenthood
The Journal of Higher Education
Postsecondary outcomes are significantly worse for student parents even though they earn higher G.P.A.'s on average. This study used institutional records and survey data from a large urban U.S. university to explore whether time poverty explains this trend. The results of regression and KHB decomposition analysis reveal that students with preschool-aged children have a significantly lower quantity and quality of time for college than comparable peers with older or no children, and that time spent on childcare is the primary reason for this difference. Both quantity and quality of time for education had a significant direct effect on college persistence and credit accumulation, even when controlling for other factors. Thus, greater availability of convenient and affordable childcare (e.g. increased on-campus childcare, revised financial aid formulas that include more accurate estimates of childcare costs) would likely lead to better college outcomes for students with young children.
Time Poverty and Parenthood: Who Has Time for College?
AERA Open
Student parents are among the least likely student groups to complete college. Regression models were run using 2003–2019 American Time Use Survey data to explore time poverty among college students. Results indicate that students with children under 13 years had significantly less discretionary time and free time, spent significantly less time on their education, enrolled part-time at significantly higher rates, and spent significantly more time studying while simultaneously caring for children, compared with students without children under 13 years. The strength of these relationships was strongest when children were younger. Parents with children under 6 years, and mothers of children of all age-groups, had significantly higher time poverty than other groups, yet spent significantly more time on education after controlling for discretionary time, at the cost of significantly less free time for themselves. Results suggest that improving college outcomes for student parents may req...
Diverging Destinies: Maternal Education and the Developmental Gradient in Time With Children
Demography, 2012
Using data from the 2003–2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS), we compare mothers’ (N = 6,640) time spent in four parenting activities across maternal education and child age subgroups. We test the hypothesis that highly educated mothers not only spend more time in active child care than less-educated mothers but also alter the composition of that time to suit children’s developmental needs more than less-educated mothers. Results support this hypothesis: not only do highly educated mothers invest more time in basic care and play when youngest children are infants or toddlers than when children are older, but differences across education groups in basic care and play time are largest among mothers with infants or toddlers; by contrast, highly educated mothers invest more time in management activities when children are 6 to 13 years old than when children are younger, and differences across education groups in management are largest among mothers with school-aged children. These pat...
Marital Status and Mothers’ Time Use: Childcare, Housework, Leisure, and Sleep
Demography, 2018
Assumptions that single mothers are "time poor" compared with married mothers are ubiquitous. We tested theorized associations derived from the time poverty thesis and the gender perspective using the 2003-2012 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS). We found marital status differentiated housework, leisure, and sleep time, but did not influence the amount of time that mothers provided childcare. Net of the number of employment hours, married mothers did more housework and slept less than never-married and divorced mothers, counter to expectations of the time poverty thesis. Nevermarried and cohabiting mothers reported more total and more sedentary leisure time than married mothers. We assessed the influence of demographic differences among mothers to account for variation in their time use by marital status. Compositional differences explained more than two-thirds of the variance in sedentary leisure time between married and never-married mothers, but only one-third of the variance between married and cohabiting mothers. The larger unexplained gap in leisure quality between cohabiting and married mothers is consistent with the gender perspective.
The role of economic and demographic factors in explaining time-use of single and married mothers
The number of households headed by single mothers has been increasing in recent years. Yet, little is known about how this growing segment of the population differs, if at all, from married mothers in their time allocation patterns. In the study reported here, a system of time allocation equations based on household production theory is estimated for both married and single mothers. The results indicate that married and single mothers make different decisions about how to allocate their time to household production, child care, leisure, and paid work. Specifically, single and married mothers responded differently to a change in their shadow wage rates, unearned income, paid child care, and the ages of the children in each of the estimated equations.