How Day Care Availability Impacts Maternal Well-Being: Variations by Individual and Cultural Resources

• In Event: 220 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Childcare and Women's Paid Work

Abstract

This study investigates whether and how expanding day-care availability improves parents’ ability to reconcile employment and family life. It extends and clarifies previous studies which showed very contradicting results by demonstrating that the effect on parental subjective well-being depends on local work-care cultures and varies by gender and by individual resources. It contributes to the literature through detailed comparisons between East and West Germany, by educational attainment, and between partnered and lone mothers. The theoretical framework draws on and extends the demands and resources approach toward perceived work-family balance (Voydanoff 2005) by considerations of work-care cultures (e.g., Kremer 2007).
The empirical analysis links individual-level data from the Socio-Economic Panel for 2007 to 2012 and from the ‘Families in Germany‘-Study for 2010 to 2012 with annual administrative records on day-care provision at county level in East and West Germany. We apply fixed-effects panel models to samples of just over 5,000 families with a youngest child under school age. Our results suggest that full-day care availability offsets otherwise negative effects of maternal full-time employment on wellbeing in West Germany and among low educated mothers. Greater local availability of full-day care is generally more positively associated with maternal satisfaction with wellbeing of mothers in East Germany, for high educated mothers, and also for lone mothers irrespective of their employment status. The results provide support for work-care cultures and individual resources being important moderators of the effect of day-care availability on parental wellbeing.

Authors

• Pia Sophia Schober, German Institute for Economic Research

• Juliane Stahl, German Institute for Economic Research