Care off the Clock: The Relationship Between Paid Care Work and Unpaid Childcare

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Abstract

Prior research has examined careworkers (those who perform paid care work for their occupation)
and caregivers (those who perform unpaid caregiving, such as care for one’s children in the home)
respectively; however, we have limited research examining how the performance of caring labor
in paid jobs might relate to the “second shift” of unpaid caregiving that is performed at home. In
this study, I ask: Do careworker and non-careworker parents differ in the amount of time they
spend on unpaid household childcare? Using data from the American Time Use Survey (2003-
2019), I show patterns of difference in childcare time of careworker and non-careworker parents
and use linear regression models to estimate childcare time in relation to careworker status. I find
that, after accounting for sociodemographic and household characteristics, careworker parents
spend approximately 23 more minutes providing childcare per day, on average, compared to noncareworker
parents. Compounded, this amounts to approximately 2.75 more hours per week spent
providing unpaid household childcare, on top of the substantial time that careworkers already
spend providing caring labor at work.

Author

• Macy Lyn Brammer, Brown University