Time use and parental enjoyment of childcare and domestic work in the UK

• In Event: 3132 - Family and Work

Abstract

Increases in women’s labour force participation and dual earning families, coupled with cultural shift towards time-intensive, child-centred parenting have placed increased pressures on UK parents and how they spend their time in recent decades. In light of these competing pressures, this paper assesses how parents feel about the activities they perform using data from the 2014-2015 UK Time Use Survey. Using multi-level modelling, we analyse parental wellbeing measured as enjoyment of domestic and childcare activities, heterogeneity in enjoyment by parent gender and age of child, and the role of contextual factors around time use (including spousal co-presence, multitasking, fragmentation and day of the week) in influencing parental enjoyment.

We find that, relative to fathers, mothers experience lower wellbeing during time spent in a variety of domestic and childcare activities. Mothers of children under schooling age enjoy interactive childcare more than mothers without a young child in the household, but for fathers, the age of children is not a significant factor. Mothers enjoy domestic work and physical childcare activities less on weekends than on weekdays, but fathers enjoy nearly all activities more on weekends than on weekdays. We find that for both parents, partner presence and multitasking appear to serve as mediating factors for many domestic and childcare activities, making them more enjoyable than they would otherwise be. However, contrary to prior studies, we find that fathers benefit from partner presence less during domestic and childcare activities than mothers do.

Authors

• Allison Dunatchik, University of Pennsylvania

• Svetlana Speight, The National Centre for Social Research

• Robert Wishart, The National Centre for Social Research