Instability in Work Schedules and Child Care Arrangements

• In Event: Families’ Work-childcare Coordination in the Context of Low-wage Work, Precarious Schedules and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Unstable work schedules have negative impacts on workers’ well-being and family functioning (Henly & Lambert, 2014; Schneider & Harknett, 2019). Work schedule instability among parents also complicates their child care needs that increases the risk of unstable care arrangements. Specifically, children may experience varying hours in child care from day to day when parents work. Child care instability hinders children’s daily routines that may lead to adverse children’s outcomes. Using two distinct samples, this study examines different dimensions of work schedule instability and the effects on child care arrangements.

Using data from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE), the first sample consists of children ages 0-5 in child care (N=4,547). Instability is measured by fluctuations in mothers’ daily work hours and children’s daily child care hours. We calculate an instability ratio (Lambert, Fugiel, & Henly, 2014) by dividing the difference between highest and lowest daily hours by the average daily hours. OLS regression is used to estimate the associations between work schedule instability and child care instability.

The second sample draws data from a study on work schedule instability and family well-being in a large U.S. city between 2019 and early 2020; 523 hourly service workers with a child under age 6 completed daily surveys via text messages (N=15,821 person-days). Parents reported whether they worked and whether the hours were the originally scheduled hours on a given day. We consider three types of schedule instability—changed hours, cancelled shift, and unscheduled shift. The outcome is whether parents had difficulties to rearrange child care due to schedule change. We use family fixed-effects models to estimate the effects of work schedule instability on child care arrangements.

In the first sample, 35% of working mothers experienced fluctuations in daily work hours and the average instability ratio was 0.47. Thirty-nine percent of children in care experienced fluctuations in daily child care hours; among them, the average instability ratio was 0.64. When mothers worked unstable hours versus stable hours, children experienced greater child care instability. Preliminary results show that an increase in instability ratio of work schedules was associated with 0.39 increase in instability ratio of child care hours. If a child spends an average of six hours per day in child care, this instability ratio reflects two-hour fluctuation. Moreover, children of single parents working unstable hours (b=0.29) and two parents both working unstable hours (b=0.30) experienced the greatest child care instability.

Work schedule instability is pervasive in the second sample (87% of parents). On average, parents experienced some type of schedule change on 11% of days; when schedule changes occurred, parents had difficulties to rearrange child care on 35% of days. Preliminary results show that parents experiencing any schedule changes were more likely to have difficulties to rearrange child care (b=0.36) than not experiencing schedule changes. Unscheduled shifts had larger effects (b=0.42) on difficulties to rearrange child care than the other types of schedule change. Findings highlight the negative consequences of parents’ work schedule instability on their young children.

Authors

• Ying-Chun Lin, Duke Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• Anna Gassman-Pines, Duke Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author