Lyn Craig

Does Father Care Mean Fathers Share? A Comparison of How Mothers and Fathers in Intact Families Spend Time with Children

This article uses diary data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey (N > 4,000) to compare by gender total child care time calculated in the measurements of (1) main activity, (2) main or secondary activity, and (3) total time spent in the company of children. It also offers an innovative gender comparison of relative time spent in (1) the activities that constitute child care, (2) child care as double activity, and (3) time with children in sole charge. These measures give a fuller picture of total time commitment to children and how men and women spend that time than has been available in previous time use analyses. The results indicate that compared to fathering, mothering involves not only more overall time commitment but more multitasking, more physical labor, a more rigid timetable, more time alone with children, and more overall responsibility for managing care. These gender differences in the quantity and nature of care apply even when women work full-time.

How Mothers and Fathers Share Childcare A Cross-National Time-Use Comparison

In most families today, childcare remains divided unequally between fathers and mothers. Scholars argue that persistence of the gendered division of childcare is due to multiple causes, including values about gender and family, disparities in paid work, class, and social context. It is likely that all of these factors interact, but to date researchers have not explored such interactions. To address this gap, we analyze nationally representative time-use data from Australia, Denmark, France, and Italy. These countries have different employment patterns, social and family policies, and cultural attitudes toward parenting and gender equality. Using data from matched married couples, we conduct a cross-national study of mothers’ and fathers’ relative time in childcare, divided along dimensions of task (i.e., routine versus non-routine activities) and co-presence (i.e., caring for children together as a couple versus caring solo). Results show that mothers’ and fathers’ work arrangements and education relate modestly to shares of childcare, and this relationship differs across countries. We find cross-national variation in whether more equal shares result from the behavior of mothers, fathers, or both spouses. Results illustrate the relevance of social context in accentuating or minimizing the impact of individual- and household-level characteristics.

Children and the revolution A time-diary analysis of the impact of motherhood on daily workload

Women are increasingly allocating time to the paid workforce, but there has not been a corresponding change by men allocating equivalent time to domestic and caring labour. In the absence of sufficient institutional and domestic support, women continue to supply the bulk of time required to care for children. This amounts to only half a sex revolution and raises the question of whether becoming a parent creates welfare differences between mothers and fathers, and/or between mothers and non-mothers. This article addresses this issue by analysing data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Time Use Survey to investigate the impact of children on adults’ (paid and unpaid) workload. The results show that the time impact of becoming a parent is considerable, but very unevenly distributed by sex. Having children markedly intensifies gender inequities in time allocation by increasing specialization and women’s workload

Parenthood, policy and work-family time in Australia 1992—2006

This article explores how having children impacted upon (a) paid work, domestic work and childcare (total workload) and (b) the gender division of labour in Australia over a 15-year period during which government changed from the progressive Labor Party to the socially conservative National/Liberal Party Coalition. It describes changes and continuity in government policies and rhetoric about work, family and gender issues and trends in workforce participation. Data from three successive nationally representative Time Use Surveys (1992, 1997 and 2006), N=3846, are analysed. The difference between parents’ and non-parents’ total workload grew substantially under both governments, especially for women. In households with children there was a nascent trend to gender convergence in paid and unpaid work under Labor, which reversed under the Coalition.

Non-standard work schedules, work-family balance and the gendered division of childcare

What effect do non-standard work schedules have on how parents of young children can meet the combined and growing demands of work and family? This article uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 2006 to explore the relationship between parents’ non-standard work hours, and the time they and their spouse spend in paid work, housework, childcare (subdivided into routine tasks and talk-based interaction) and in their children’s company. Parents who work non-standard hours spend significantly longer in paid work and less time on housework and childcare than those who work standard hours. Spouses’ schedules impact much more on mothers’ than on fathers’ time. When fathers work non-standard hours, mothers do more housework and routine childcare, so the gendered division of household labour intensifies. Mothers’ non-standard hours allow them to schedule their own paid work and family responsibilities around each other, with little effect upon fathers’ unpaid work.

is there really a second shift, and if so, who does it? a time-diary investigation

This paper draws on data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) (over 4,000 randomly selected households) to tease out the dimensions of the ‘second shift’. Predictions that as women entered the paid workforce men would contribute more to household labour have largely failed to eventuate. This underpins the view that women are working a second shift because they are shouldering a dual burden of paid and unpaid work. However, time use research seems to show that when both paid and unpaid work is counted, male and female workloads are in total very similar. This has led to suggestions that a literal second shift is a myth; that it exists in the sense that women do more domestic work than men, but not in the sense that they work longer hours in total. Using a more accurate and telling measure of workload than previous research (paid and unpaid labour including multitasked activities), this paper explores the second shift and how it relates to family configuration, ethnicity and indicators of class and socioeconomic standing. It finds a clear disparity between the total workloads of mothers and fathers, much of which consists of simultaneous (secondary) activity, and some demographic differences in female (but not male) total workloads. It concludes that the view that the second shift is a myth is only sustainable by averaging social groups very broadly and by excluding multitasking from the measurement of total work activity.

Self-employment, work-family time and the gender division of labour

Does being self-employed, as opposed to being an employee, make a difference to how parents with young children can balance work and family demands? Does self-employment facilitate more equal gender divisions of labour? This article uses the Australian Time Use Survey to identify associations between self-employment and mothers’ and fathers’ time in paid work, domestic labour and childcare and when during the day they perform these activities. The time self-employed mothers devote to each activity differs substantially from that of employee mothers, while fathers’ time is relatively constant across employment types. Working from home is highly correlated with self-employment for mothers, implying the opportunity to be home-based is a pull factor in mothers becoming self-employed. Results suggest mothers use self-employment to combine earning and childcare whereas fathers prioritize paid work regardless of employment type. Self-employment is not associated with gender redistribution of paid and unpaid work, although it facilitates some rescheduling.

Shared parent–child leisure time in four countries

Sharing leisure experiences is thought to promote family bonding and communication, and foster children’s intellectual, social and psychological development. Such time is ‘purposive’, and requires planning, organisation and maintenance, usually from the mother. Do parents and children spend more time in shared leisure together in countries where mothers do more childcare and spend longer each day with children? Using time use data we compare shared parent–child shared leisure time in four countries with different maternal work–force participation and attitudes to substitute childcare and child-raising: USA, Australia, Denmark and France. We create harmonised measures of leisure time mothers are with children, and time both parents are with children engaging in leisure in the same location (except in the USA, which has information from only one parent). To isolate shared interactive activities, time is further subdivided into (a) watching TV, DVDs or videos with children, (b) non-TV leisure time with children and (c) leisure time with children outside the family home. We find that overall time with children varies substantially between countries, reflecting mothers’ average time in paid work, but time in shared parent–child leisure, particularly outside the family home, does not.

Part-time work, women’s work–life conflict, and job satisfaction: A cross-national comparison of Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom

This study uses the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2013 ‘Family and Changing Gender Roles’ module (N = 1773) to examine cross-country differences in the relationship between women’s part-time work and work–life conflict and job satisfaction. We hypothesize that part-time work will lead to less favorable outcomes in countries with employment policies that are less protective of part-time employees because the effects of occupational downgrading counteract the benefits of increased time availability. Our comparison focuses on the Netherlands and Australia while using Germany, the United Kingdom, and Sweden as benchmarks. Part-time employment is prevalent in all five countries, but has the most support and protection in the Dutch labor market. We find little evidence that country of residence conditions the effects of part-time work. Overall, the results suggest that part-time work reduces work–life conflict to a similar extent in all countries except Sweden. The effects on job satisfaction are negligible. We discuss the implications for social policies meant to stimulate female labor force participation.

Satisfaction with work-family balance for parents of early adolescents compared to parents of younger children

Abstract This paper explores aspects of how parents of young teenagers experience balancing work and family demands, compared to parents of younger children. It uses data from Waves 1 and 3 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) 1997. It assesses whether satisfaction with work-family balance differs for parents of adolescent children compared with parents of younger children, the extent to which parents of adolescents use non-parental child care, experience difficulty in finding child care or provide personal supervision of their children after school, and whether satisfaction with work-family balance of parents with adolescents is affected by access to family- friendly workplace measures.