Parental Care Preferences, Search Strategies, and Child Care Arrangements in the Context of Nonstandard Work

• In Event: Searching and Finding Child Care to Meet Nontraditional Hour Care Needs and Preferences

Abstract

Over the last thirty years, U.S. jobs in the regular economy have become increasingly precarious due to a combination of macroeconomic changes, weakened labor laws, and managerial strategies that favor labor flexibility over worker protections. This precarity shows itself in the temporal cadence of work: It is commonplace for employees – especially working parents in low-paying, hourly jobs – to receive work schedules with only a few days’ notice, to work hours and shifts that regularly vary, and to perform at least some of their work tasks outside of standard daytime, weekday hours (i.e., early mornings, evenings, weekends, overnights). This employment context creates caregiving challenges for working parents with young children, especially when workers do not have input into the timing of their work schedules.

Parents who work nonstandard hours and precarious schedules struggle to secure formal care arrangements in the U.S. market-based child care system and are less able to access government child care supports. Less than ten percent of centers provide care outside of standard daytime, weekday hours and their classroom curriculum and management practices typically require families to commit to a regular attendance schedule. Licensed home settings offer more flexibility, but it is the informal sector – family, friends, and neighbors – that provides the majority of care during nonstandard times and to accommodate variable scheduling needs. Policy makers and researchers often assume that parents prefer informal arrangements for their children during nontraditional times. Yet, there is surprisingly little quantitative research investigating whether the predominance of informal care use is indeed a preference and not a response to limited care alternatives during nonstandard and variable hour times.

Using data from a survey of approximately 400 parents in the State of Illinois, located in the midwestern United States, the current study examines parents’ experiences searching for and using nontraditional hour (NTH) child care, and whether care preferences vary as a function of provider characteristics and care timing. In addition to descriptive statistics (frequencies, means), we conduct multivariate analyses to identify individual and job-related factors associated with care type, search, and care priorities. Using a choice-based conjoint design adopted in the survey, the study also examines child care preferences across various nonstandard hour schedules, taking four program features into consideration: care type, caregiver familiarity, caregiver training, and program activities. We estimate respondent relative preferences by calculating standardized part-worth utilities using a Hierarchical Bayesian (HB) estimator, from which we calculate average utility scores and relative importance weights (Davidson et al., 2021).

Given high rates of nonstandard and precarious work among parents with young children and limited quantitative research on parental search strategies for care during NTH or on parental priorities and preferences, findings gleaned from this study will contribute to advancing knowledge that can inform NTH policy models. The policy implications of these findings will be discussed in the context of new initiatives to expand the availability of nontraditional hour child care that aligns with family preferences and needs.

Authors

• Suh Kyung Lee, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Julia Henly, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Rose Geoghegan, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Co-Author