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Time with Children: Do Fathers and Mothers Replace Each Other When One Parent is Unemployed?

Le temps consacré aux enfants: les parents se substituent-ils l’un à l’autre quand l’un est au chômage?

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Abstract

This article aims to study the substitution of parental time between the mother and the father. Taking the “experience” of unemployment as a release from the time constraint, we analyse time transfers between partners in such a situation. A bivariate Tobit model is applied on the French time-use data. It shows that parents quite rarely substitute the time devoted to children between each other, except for child transportation and childcare. Parents do not want to relinquish their parental activities, a fact which reflects their desire to contribute to the children’s education, and the contribution of parental time to the balance of power between spouses. Exchanges remain asymmetric: non-employed fathers release less their partner from parental tasks than unemployed mothers do, which reflects the weight of gender social norms.

Résumé

Cet article étudie les réallocations de temps consacré aux enfants entre parents. Nous analysons le cas particulier des transferts de temps entre conjoints quand l’un est au chômage, situation dans laquelle la contrainte de temps est plus souple. A partir d’un modèle tobit bivarié estimé à partir des données françaises de l’Enquête Emplois du temps (INSEE 1999), nous montrons que les parents se substituent rarement pour le temps consacré aux enfants, sauf pour les temps de trajet et les activités de soins. Les parents renoncent peu à leurs activités parentales, manifestant ainsi leur désir de contribuer tous deux à l’éducation de leurs enfants, le temps parental pouvant se révéler un moyen d’exercer son pouvoir au sein du couple. Les échanges restent asymétriques, les pères chômeurs déchargeant moins leur conjointe des tâches parentales que les mères au chômage, ce qui reflète le poids des normes sociales.

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Notes

  1. In 1994, 8.6% of children whose parents were separated lived with their father (Villeneuve Gokalp 2000).

  2. Two months of the Swedish parental leave cannot be transferred between the parents. In Iceland, since 2000, the leave is distributed so that fathers are given three months’ leave, mothers 3 months and the parents are given 3 months to share as they wish.

  3. Contrary to Nordic countries or Netherlands, part time work is not the norm for French working mothers. Around 35% of working mothers work part-time.

  4. We did not consider inactive (or out-of-labour-force) women because they are likely to have chosen this status in order to take care of and spend time with children, whereas unemployment is considered as an external shock.

  5. We are not able to compare time schedules in a dynamic way because the survey used is cross-sectional.

  6. Many studies have been devoted to searching for negative effects of maternal employment on children’s academic achievement and emotional adjustment. It is an issue of heated debate, empirical results being contradictory. For instance, Greenstein (1995) and Hill et al. (2005) found that mother’s employment could have a negative impact, especially during the children’s early years, whereas Parcel and Menaghan (1994) concluded that this is only the case when employment is associated with another stressful situation such as long hours of work. A recent study correcting for family fixed effect models concludes that there is little evidence that mother’s employment negatively affects children’s early test scores (James-Burdumy 2005). This debate lets Bianchi (2000) conclude “It would appear that the dramatic movement into labour force by women of childbearing age in the United States has been accomplished with relatively little consequence for children”.

  7. Only 1 day diary was collected, on either a weekday or a weekend day. The response rate of this survey was 68.2%. Out of the 16,136 respondents, 95.7% filled in the diary.

  8. Longitudinal time use surveys do not exist.

  9. Individuals between two jobs are included as unemployed if they reported looking for a job.

  10. We considered people on leave for more than a month (maternity leave, parental leave, etc.) as out of labour force because they had, for the time being, more free time to devote to children as they were temporarily not working.

  11. 2/3 of unemployed men and 60% of unemployed women in our sample receive unemployment benefit.

  12. The replacement rate is 40.4% of the previous daily wage, plus a fixed amount (9.56 euros), or 57.4% of the “reference daily gross wage”. The digression rate is 17% every 6 months. Unemployed people are not entitled to unemployment benefit if they quit their job.

  13. We attempted to take the heterogeneous nature of unemployment into account to control for its possible endogeneity. We carried out tests using different definitions for unemployment, based on its duration (long-term or short-term unemployment), active efforts to find employment (Were job applications made over the previous three months or not? Was time spent looking for a job on the day of the survey?). The results remain the same regardless of the specifications chosen, but as the size of the unemployed category falls, the significance thresholds increase. That is why we chose to use the “declared” definition, i.e. the widest.

  14. For other applications of this model, see for instance Doiron, D. and Kalb, G., 2005, “Demands for Child Care and Household Labour Supply in Australia”, Economic Record, 254: 215–236, or Neuman K. D. and Lawson D. M., 2005, “The Distribution of Retirement Leisure”, Papers and Proceedings of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, Available at http://www.users.drew.edu/dlawson/research/lera.pdf.

  15. Matrimonial legal status was tested, but was not significant, as was the case for Rapoport and Le Bourdais (2001) for Canada.

  16. The estimates are weighted to ensure representativity of the sample.

  17. If we consider fathers and mothers who participate in parental activities on the day studied, paternal time equals 1 h and 10 min, maternal time a little more than 2 h.

  18. The difference between the mean joint times when the mother is unemployed and when both partners are working is significantly positive.

  19. In the regression carried out for men, the coefficient of the variable man unemployed/working woman is significantly positive, whereas in the regression performed for women, the coefficient of this variable is not significantly different from zero.

  20. One third of women working part-time report in the labour force survey they would like to work full time.

  21. We controlled for the number and age of children, woman’s and man’s education, couple’s mean age and age difference, domestic help, indicator of very low household income and day of the week. One covariate was dropped (man’s socio-occupational category) and one was simplified (household income is henceforth a dummy) to help models to converge thanks to fewer non-zero values of parental time for each realm. The results of the complete set of estimates can be obtained from the authors.

  22. This orientation is clearly illustrated by semantics, as home child carers are known as “assistants maternelles” and nursery schools as “écoles maternelles”.

  23. The question asked was “Do you consider this task mainly as (1) a chore (2) a task which you do not mind doing (3) a pleasurable activity”.

  24. In this case, the level of significance is 13%.

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  1. INED, 133 boulevard Davout, 75980, Paris Cedex 20, France

    Ariane Pailhé & Anne Solaz

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  1. Ariane Pailhé
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Correspondence to Ariane Pailhé.

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Pailhé, A., Solaz, A. Time with Children: Do Fathers and Mothers Replace Each Other When One Parent is Unemployed?. Eur J Population 24, 211–236 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-007-9143-5

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