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Australian Mothering in Cross-national Perspective: Time Allocation, Gender Gaps, Scheduling and Subjective Time Pressure

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Australian Mothering

Abstract

Motherhood brings significant change in the way women spend and experience their time. Having children is an intensely personal experience. Yet, much of the practical impact upon mothers’ time is shaped by the social organisation of work and care, which means the daily demands of parenting and child-raising vary over time and place. This chapter uses nationally representative time use surveys from four countries (Australia, Finland, Korea and Spain) to compare parents’ overall workloads when paid and unpaid work is scheduled over the day and week, gender divisions of work and care and the subjective time pressure associated with transitions to parenthood. It discusses how the findings relate to family policy, national work time regimes and social attitudes towards gender roles, mothering and fatherhood.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jerry Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson, The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  2. 2.

    Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson and Melissa A. Milke, The Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006); Jacobs and Gerson, The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality; Lyndall Strazdins et al., ‘Time Scarcity: Another Health Inequality?’ Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 43, no. 3 (2011); Teresa A. Sullivan, ‘Greedy Institutions, Overwork, and Work-Life Balance,’ Sociological Inquiry 84, no. 1 (2014).

  3. 3.

    Hielke Buddelmeyer, Daniel S. Hamermesh and Mark Wooden, ‘The Stress Cost of Children on Moms and Dads,’ European Economic Review 109 (2018); Liana C. Sayer, ‘Trends in Women’s and Men’s Time Use, 1965–2012: Back to the Future?,’ in Gender and Couple Relationships, eds. Susan M. McHale et al. (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016).

  4. 4.

    Sibyl Kleiner, ‘Subjective Time Pressure: General or Domain Specific,’ Social Science Research 47 (2014); Strazdins et al., ‘Time Scarcity: Another Health Inequality?’

  5. 5.

    Judy Rose, Belinda Hewitt and Janeen Baxter, ‘Women and Part-Time Employment: Easing or Squeezing Time Pressure?’ Journal of Sociology 49, no. 1 (2013).

  6. 6.

    Buddelmeyer, Hamermesh and Wooden, ‘The Stress Cost of Children on Moms and Dads.’; Strazdins et al., ‘Time Scarcity: Another Health Inequality?’

  7. 7.

    Suzanne M. Bianchi and Melissa A. Milkie, ‘Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st Century,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 72, no. 3 (2010); Berenice Monna and Anne H. Gauthier, ‘A Review of the Literature on the Social and Economic Determinants of Parental Time,’ Journal of Family and Economic Issues 29, no. 4 (December 1, 2008).

  8. 8.

    Jane Lewis, Work-Family Balance, Gender and Policy (Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009).

  9. 9.

    Michelle J. Budig and Paula England, ‘The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,’ American Sociological Review 66, no. 2 (2001); Michelle J. Budig, Joya Misra and Irene Boeckmann, ‘The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-national Perspective: The Importance of Work–Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes,’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 19, no. 2 (2012); Jane Waldfogel, ‘Understanding the “Family Gap” in Pay for Women with Children,’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1998).

  10. 10.

    Lyn Craig and Killian Mullan, ‘Parenthood, Gender and Work-Family Time in the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 72, no. 5 (2010).

  11. 11.

    Martin Dribe and Maria Stanfors, ‘Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence from Sweden,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 71, no. 1 (2009).

  12. 12.

    Jill E. Yavorsky, Claire M. Kamp Dush and Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan, ‘The Production of Inequality: The Gender Division of Labor across the Transition to Parenthood,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 77, no. 3 (2015).

  13. 13.

    Craig and Mullan, ‘Parenthood, Gender and Work-Family Time in the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark.’

  14. 14.

    Lyn Craig, Brendan Churchill and Melissa Wong, ‘Youth, Recession, and Downward Gender Convergence: Young People’s Employment, Education, and Homemaking in Finland, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States 2000–2013,’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society (2018).

  15. 15.

    Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers, Families that Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003); Lewis, Work-Family Balance, Gender and Policy.

  16. 16.

    Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jungmin Lee, ‘Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?’ The Review of Economics and Statistics 89, no. 2 (2007); Kleiner, ‘Subjective Time Pressure: General or Domain Specific.’; Marybeth J. Mattingly and Liana C. Sayer, ‘Under Pressure: Gender Differences in the Relationship between Free Time and Feeling Rushed,’ Journal of Marriage and Family 68, no. 1 (2006).

  17. 17.

    Matt Hurst, ‘Who Gets Any Sleep These Days? Sleep Patterns of Canadians,’ Canadian Social Trends 11-008 (2008); Stefanie Plage, Francisco Perales and Janeen Baxter, ‘Doing Gender Overnight?: Parenthood, Gender and Sleep Quantity and Quality in Australia,’ Family Matters 97 (2016).

  18. 18.

    Lyn Craig, Judith Brown and Jiweon Jun, ‘Fatherhood, Motherhood and Time Pressure in Australia, Korea, and Finland,’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society (2019).

  19. 19.

    Lyn Craig, Judith Brown and Jiweon Jun, ‘Fatherhood, Motherhood and Time Pressure in Australia, Korea, and Finland.’

  20. 20.

    Huong Dinh, Lyndall Strazdins and Jennifer Welsh, ‘Hour-Glass Ceilings: Work-Hour Thresholds, Gendered Health Inequities,’ Social Science & Medicine 176 (2017).

  21. 21.

    Budig, Misra and Boeckmann, ‘The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-national Perspective: The Importance of Work–Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes.’

  22. 22.

    Marybeth J. Mattingly and Suzanne M. Blanchi, ‘Gender Differences in the Quantity and Quality of Free Time: The U.S. Experience,’ Social Forces 81, no. 3 (2003).

  23. 23.

    Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan, ‘Time Use, Gender, and Public Policy Regimes,’ Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 10, no. 2 (2003); Gornick and Meyers, Families that Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment.

  24. 24.

    Gornick and Meyers, Families that Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

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Craig, L., Brown, J.E., van Tienoven, T.P. (2019). Australian Mothering in Cross-national Perspective: Time Allocation, Gender Gaps, Scheduling and Subjective Time Pressure. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_15

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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