Suzanne M. Bianchi

Taking on the Second Shift: Time Allocations and Time Pressures of U.S. Parents with Preschoolers

The term second shift from Hochschilds (1989) classic volume is commonly used by scholars to mean that employed mothers face an unequal load of household labor and thus a double day of work. We use two representative samples of contemporary U.S. parents with preschoolers to test how mothers employed fulltime and married to a full-time worker (focal mothers) differ in time allocations and pressures from fathers and from mothers employed parttime or not at all. Results indicate focal mothers total workloads are greater than fathers by a week-and-a-half, not an extra month per year. Focal mothers have less leisure, but do not experience more onerous types of unpaid work, nor get less sleep than fathers. Focal mothers feel greater time pressures compared with fathers; however, some of these tensions extend to other mothers of young children. Finally, these families may be engaged in fewer quality activities with children compared with families where mothers are not employed fulltime.

Explaining Racial/Ethnic Variation in Partnered Women’s and Men’s Housework Does One Size Fit All?

Using a national sample of 12,424 partnered women and 10,721 partnered men from the 2003-2006 American Time Use Survey, this article examines racial/ethnic variation in women’s and men’s housework time and its covariates. The ratio of women’s to men’s housework hours is greatest for Hispanics and Asians and smallest for Whites and Blacks. White and Hispanic women’s housework hours are associated with household composition and employment suggesting that the time availability perspective is a good predictor for these women, but may have less explanatory power for other race/ethnic groups of women. Relative resources also have explanatory power for White women’s housework time but are weak predictors for women of Other race/ethnicities. Time availability and relative resource measures show some association with White men’s housework time but are generally poor predictors among other race/ethnic groups of men, suggesting that traditional models of housework allocation do not “fit” all groups equally.

Geographic Dispersion and the Well-Being of the Elderly

Perhaps the largest problem confronting our aging population is the rising cost of health care, particularly the costs borne by Medicare and Medicaid. A chief component of this expense is long-term care. Much of this care for an unmarried (mostly widowed) mother is currently provided by adult children. The provision of family care depends importantly on the geographic dispersion of family members. In this study we provide preliminary evidence on the geographic dispersion of adult children and their older unmarried mother. Coresidence is less likely for married adult children, those who are parents and the highly educated and more likely for those who are not working or only employed part time and for black and Hispanic adult children. Close proximity is more common for married children who are parents but less common for the highly educated. When we look at transitions between one wave of data collection and the next (a 2-year interval), about half of adult children live more than 10 miles away at both points, a little less than one quarter live within 10 miles at both points, and 8 percent are coresident at both points in time. Among the 17 percent who make a transition, about half of the changes result in greater distance between the adult child and mother and half bring them into closer proximity. The needs of both generations are likely reflected in these transitions. In fact, a mother’s health is not strongly related to most transitions and if anything, distance tends to be greater for older mothers relative to those mothers in their early 50s.

Gender, Time Use, and Aging

Do gendered time use patterns among older adults mirror those observed in earlier life stages? Or does time use allocation in later life become less gendered as life stages are reoriented away from paid work and raising children toward new pursuits? Later life disability and increased likelihood of living alone in young and older adulthood may alter the activities in which individuals engage, the amount of time spent on various activities, and time socializing and interacting with others. “Productive” uses of time may be redefined with implications for later life well-being. Both objective and subjective aspects of time likely change at later life stages.

How Do We Spend Our Time? Evidence from the American Time Use Survey, edited by Jean Kimmel. Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2008. 186 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-88099-337-1 (pbk.). US

externalities associated with these women’s decisions. This omission is most notable in a section that discusses how some firms are working creatively to retain talented female employees. At issue is the case of ‘‘Anna,’’ a new mother who planned to leave her position in a large corporate law firm. The firm took the suggestion of a female colleague who was also a mother and granted Anna an extended leave of absence. The authors note, ‘‘What is interesting is that. . . the impetus for change at the workplace was jumpstarted by a working mother’’ (p. 158). But what would have happened if that working mother had herself opted out? By focusing entirely on the decisions of individual women to leave the labor force, Glass Ceilings ignores the possibility that those individual decisions might have important negative ramifications for the labor market situations of other women. The existence of this type of negative externality would suggest a level of labor force participation among mothers that is too low from a societal standpoint. Despite these omissions, Glass Ceilings and 100-Hour Couples is an important contribution to the literature. The book provides new insights into the labor force decisions of working mothers and will be of great use to any reader interested – academically or personally – in the debate surrounding work–life balance in the United States.