Abstract
Time use studies find that employed mothers reduce their parental childcare time by much less than an hour for every hour they spend in market work. This paper uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 1997 (4,059 randomly selected households) to investigate how employed mothers manage to avoid a one-for-one trade-off between work and childcare. It compares the time allocation of employed fathers, employed mothers and non-employed mothers and finds that parents use non-parental childcare to reschedule as well as to replace their own childcare, that employed mothers reschedule activities from weekdays to weekends or to earlier or later in the day, and spend less time than other mothers in housework, childfree leisure and personal care.
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Notes
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) survey has been described by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as ‘the Mercedes of time-use surveys’ (Committee on National Statistics, 2000:30).
The ABS treats legally married and de facto married couples alike, reflecting their treatment in the Australian legal system.
This information together provides a very comprehensive picture of total time devoted to children, but because the concern of the present study is substitution of one type of activity for another, in the bulk of the analysis, primary activity only is analyzed. Secondary activity is included in the variable “active childcare”.
Informal care is non-regulated care undertaken in either the child’s home or elsewhere, for no payment, often done by the child’s relatives (most usually by grandparents).
1) Interactive child care (ABS activity codes 521 and 531): Face-to-face parent-child interaction in activities teaching, helping children learn, reading, telling stories, playing games, listening to children, talking with and reprimanding children. 2) Physical child care (ABS activity codes 511 and 512): Face-to-face parent-child interaction that revolves around physical care of children. Feeding, bathing, dressing, putting children to sleep, carrying, holding, cuddling, hugging, soothing 3) Travel and communication (ABS activity codes 57 and 58): Travel can be associated with transportation to school, visits, sports training, music and ballet lessons, parents and teacher nights. Travel time includes time spent waiting, and meeting trains or buses. Communication (in person, by telephone or written) includes discussions with a spouse, other family members, friends, teachers and child workers when the conversation is about the child.
Passive child care (ABS activity code 54): supervising games and recreational activities such as swimming, being an adult presence for children to turn to, maintaining a safe environment, monitoring children playing outside the home, keeping an eye on sleeping children.
Aged 35-44, on the average weekly income, has one child under 5, who uses no non-parental care, has no disabled family member, and who responded to the diary on a weekday.
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This material was produced with the assistance of the Office for Women through the Time Use Research Fellowship Scheme. The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Office for Women or the Australian Government.
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Craig, L. How Employed Mothers in Australia Find Time for Both Market Work and Childcare. J Fam Econ Iss 28, 69–87 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-006-9047-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-006-9047-2