The parenting of infants: A time-use study

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 132, Issue 10, 2009, Pages 33-43

  Drago, Robert ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77949335405     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. See Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, and Jeffrey Hayes, The Work, Family, and Equity Index: How Does the United States Measure Up? (Montreal, QC, The Institute for Health and Social Policy, 2007), on the Internet at www.mcgill.ca/files/ihsp/WFEI2007.pdf (visited Nov. 14, 2008).
2. See Michael Baker and Kevin Milligan, "How Does Job-Protected Maternity Leave Affect Mothers' Employment?" Journal of Labor Economics, October 2008, pp. 655-91.
3. See Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Mellisa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), p. 63.
4. For an example of an article which finds that levels of fathers' involvement increase as children age, see Jeffrey J. Wood and Rena L. Repetti, "What gets dad involved? A longitudinal study of change in parental child caregiving involvement," Journal of Family Psychology, March 2004, pp. 237-49.
5. However, W.J. Yeung, J.F. Sandberg, P.E. Davis-Kean, and S.L. Hofferth, "Children's Time with Fathers in Intact Families," Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2001, pp. 136-54, find fathers devoting more time to children aged zero to two years.
6. For example, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Workdays, Workhours, and Work Schedules (Kalamazoo, Mich., Upjohn Institute, 1996), p. 29
7. finds men working 1.85 percent more days per week and 3.43 percent more hours per day when they have children under the age of 3 years, in comparison with when they do not have children younger than 3. Bianchi and others, Changing Rhythms, p. 47, find fathers with infants working around 0.8 more hour per week relative to fathers whose children are all over the age of 6 years.
8. For information on long hours and the ideal worker norm, see Joan Williams, Unbending Gender (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000).
9. Robert Drago, Striking a Balance (Boston, Dollars and Sense, 2007).
10. For information on the norm of intensive mothering, see Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1996).
11. See Jane Waldfogel, What Children Need (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2006).
12. Much of the information in this section is drawn from the American Time Use Survey User's Guide (U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008).
13. For example, see Bianchi and others, Changing Rythms, pp. 27-30.
14. A check of the 2006 data for married and unmarried partners reveals only one male same-sex couple and no female same-sex couples who also were parents of infants, so the distinction between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples is ignored in this article
15. The weights correct for demographic characteristics including race/ethnicity and income, and for the oversampling of weekend days in the survey. The relevant weights are TU06FWGT for the 2003-05 samples and TUFINLWGT for the 2006 and 2007 data.
16. See Mary Dorinda Allard, Suzanne Bianchi, Jay Stewart, and Vanessa R. Wight, "Comparing childcare measures in the ATUS and earlier time-diary studies," Monthly Labor Review, May 2007, pp. 27-36.
17. Respondents' sleep time is excluded from ATUS estimates of "child in care" time because respondents themselves were inconsistent in reporting child-in-care time from when they were asleep. The exclusion remedies this inconsistency.
18. The total solo childcare measure does not exclude time when grandparents or other family or friends are present
19. When contemplating the validity of the ATUS data, it is reassuring to discover that, across weekdays and weekends, most coupled mothers' total childcare time minus their total solo childcare time was approximately equal to the quantity of time that the respective fathers reported engaging in childcare in conjunction with their partner. In a parallel, most coupled fathers' total childcare time minus their total solo childcare time was approximately equal to the quantity of time that the respective mothers reported engaging in childcare in conjunction with their partner. This is particularly impressive given that the samples of coupled fathers and mothers are independently collected.
20. Surprisingly, there are no obvious efficiency gains in terms of childcare time for parenting both infants and other children simultaneously. If there were, then adding interaction terms for parents of one or more infants and parents of at least two children to the regressions would yield negative effects. Yet the addition of the interaction terms yields only one significant effect in the 18 regressions: coupled mothers of infants and of other children devote an additional 53 minutes to solo childcare on weekdays. (Results are available from the author.) Further analysis suggests this additional time may come from reductions in work hours; regressing usual work hours against the same independent variables for coupled mothers reveals significantly lower weekly work hours when both an infant and other children are present, with the divergence estimated to be 4.2 hours per week.
21. See Suzanne M. Bianchi, "Maternal Employment and Time with Children: Dramatic Change or Surprising Continuity?" Demography, November 2000, pp. 401-14.
22. For examples of such networks, see Anita I. Garey, Weaving Work and Motherhood (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 89-102.
23. As is standard, respondents classified as performing shiftwork are those who report a majority of working time on the diary day outside of the hours between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
24. For more information see, for example, John Iceland and Rima Wilkes, "Does Socioeconomic Status Matter? Race, Class, and Residential Segregation," Social Problems, May 2006, pp. 248-73.
25. The ATUS-CPS family income data are placed into the following categories: less than $10,000, $10,000 to $12,499, $12,500 to $14,999, and $15,000 to $19,999. For the year 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau defines poverty for a single parent with one child to be associated with household income of less than $14,291, and poverty for a couple with one child to be associated with household income of less than $16,689. Although one could use the $15,000 cutoff for single mothers, the $12,500 figure serves to make poverty groups more comparable across the single and couple samples, given that the income needs of couples should be greater. However, changing the single-mother poverty cutoff to $15,000 or raising the middle-class income cutoff from $60,000 to $75,000 leaves the general pattern of results unchanged. See the U.S. Census Bureau, "Poverty Thresholds 2007," at www.census.gov/hhes/ www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.html (visited Oct. 9, 2009).
26. See Pamela Stone, Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 2007), pp. 3-4.