Unequal Time: Gender, Class, and Family in Employment Schedules

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-412
Author(s):  
Krista Lynn Minnotte
Keyword(s):  
Employment Schedules

scholarly journals Gender differences in the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on unpaid care work and psychological distress in the UK

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baowen Xue ◽  
Anne McMunn
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Work Patterns ◽  
Unpaid Care ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Employment Schedules ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

School and nursery closures and homeworking during the Covid-19 crisis have resulted in an immediate increase in unpaid care work, particularly for parents. Amongst contemporary couples in the UK, women spent more time than men doing housework, childcare and caring for adults prior to the crisis; thus, lockdown draws new attention to gender inequality in divisions of unpaid care work. This study aims to answer how couples in the UK divided childcare and housework during lockdown and whether this is associated with changes in levels of psychological distress. Data for this study come from the April and May waves of Understanding Society Covid-19 study. Psychological distress was measured using the GHQ score (ranges from 0 to 36). Unpaid care work included men and women’s hours spent on childcare and housework and the impact of increased unpaid care work on employment schedules. We found that every week, women spent 5 more hours on housework and 10 more hours on childcare than men during lockdown, and this increased housework and childcare was associated with higher levels of psychological distress for women. One-third of parents adapted their work patterns because of childcare/ homeschooling. Men and women who adapted their work patterns had on average 1.16 and 1.39 higher GHQ scores than those who did not. This association was much stronger if he or she was the only member in the household who adapted their work patterns, or if she was a lone mother. Only 10% of fathers reduced work hours due to care work compared to 20% of mothers. Fathers had more psychological distress if they reduced work hours but she did not, compared to neither reducing work hours. Our research suggests that lockdown has hit people with young families and lone mothers particularly hard in terms of mental health, and continued gender inequality in divisions of unpaid care work during lockdown may be putting women at a greater risk of psychological distress.

scholarly journals Motivation for Night Work and Parents’ Work-to-Family Conflict and Life Satisfaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Weinshenker
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Family Conflict ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Nonstandard Employment ◽  
Employment Schedules ◽  
Do So

Purpose - I test the hypothesis that the effects of evening and night employment on working parents’ work-to-family conflict and life satisfaction depend on the reasons that individuals name for their schedules. Methodology/approach - Regression models are fitted to data from an original sample of 589 employed U.S. parents.Findings –Partnered (married and cohabiting) fathers who work partially in the evening or night experience less work-to-family conflict if they report personal motives, but schedule motivation does not affect work-to-family conflict among partnered or single mothers. Partnered mothers who work primarily in the evening or at night report higher life satisfaction if they do so for personal reasons, but this effect is not found for single mothers or partnered fathers. Specifically seeing their schedules as facilitating family care matters for partnered mothers, but not fathers. Originality/value – Although nonstandard employment schedules have been linked to poor well-being among working parents, this is the first quantitative study to assess the role of worker motivation to the author’s knowledge. Research limitations/implications – The results are suggestive because they are based on a non-probability sample of modest size. However, they demonstrate the need for future studies of employment scheduling to collect information on worker motivations.Social implications – Most night workers in the U.S. do not select their shifts for personal reasons, putting them at risk for work-to-family conflict and reduced life satisfaction. They deserve extra support in exchange for laboring while others sleep or spend time with family.

scholarly journals Measuring Paternal Involvement in Childcare and Housework

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Norman ◽  
Mark Elliot
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Latent Variables ◽  
Paternal Involvement ◽  
Gender Role Attitudes ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
Employment Hours ◽  
Employment Schedules ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Paternal Engagement

There is currently no quantitative tool for measuring paternal involvement in childcare and housework. To address this, we run Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on a sample of households from the 2001-02 sweep of the UK's Millennium Cohort Study. Two quantitative measures of paternal involvement in childcare and housework are derived for when the child is aged nine months old, which appear to be isomorphic with two dimensions of Michael Lamb's paternal involvement: engagement and responsibility. Two, moderately correlated latent variables are produced, which are then used to explore employment and socio-demographic characteristics of involved fathers. Our results show that paternal engagement and responsibility are correlated, albeit weakly, with fathers’ employment hours, education and gender role attitudes. The strongest correlation is with mothers’ employment hours, which suggests that mothers’ employment schedules are more important than fathers’ for fostering paternal involvement when the child is aged nine months old. There are also variations in paternal engagement and responsibility according to ethnicity, which suggests cultural differences might interact with the ability of fathers to be involved. This highlights the need for further exploratory analyses on variations of paternal involvement by different ethnic classifications, which has been fairly limited to date.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document