Diverging Paths: The Onset of Gender-and-Class Differentiated Family Labour in Young Adolescence

• In Event: Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 20: Youth, Family, and Social Reproduction

Abstract

How adolescents use their time, especially for their time allocation of family labour, is a critical aspect to reflect on the gender disparity and the intergenerational transmission of social class. While fewer studies focus on adolescents’ time use in family labour, including types and time allocation of finer family labour categories, we know little about the characteristics of disparities in adolescents’ engagement in domestic work and caregiving activities across the school day and non-school day. Addressing these gaps, this paper uses Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS) and time use data from the UK Millennium Cohort Survey Sweep 6 to provide a nuanced and visualised description of adolescents’ family labour time use allocation. The preliminary typical family labour allocation provides the new evidence regarding the unequal division of labour across gender, social class, and the interaction of gender and class, as well as the reproduction of social inequalities at the early stage of the life course, thereby complementing adolescents’ contribution within the families. Moreover, the detailed adolescents’ family labour engagement forms a foundation for future research to explore the antecedents and consequences of adolescents’ family labour engagement, and even for their development.

Author

• Runjie Sui, University of Edinburgh