ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted work and family life around the world. For parents, this upending meant a potential re-negotiation of the ‘status quo' in the gendered division of labour. A comparative lens provides extended understandings of changes in fathers' domestic work based in socio-cultural context–in assessing the size and consequences of change in domestic labour in relation to the type of work-care regime. Using novel harmonized data from four countries (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) and a work-care regime framework, this study examines cross-national changes in fathers' shares of domestic labour during the early months of the pandemic and whether these changes are associated with parents' satisfaction with the division of labour. Results indicate that fathers' shares of housework and childcare increased early in the pandemic in all countries, with fathers' increased shares of housework being particularly pronounced in the US. Results also show an association between fathers' increased shares of domestic labour and mothers' increased satisfaction with the division of domestic labour in the US, Canada, and the UK. Such comparative work promises to be generative for understanding the pandemic's imprint on gender relations far into the future. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
The notion that U.S. mothers with minor children are less happy and more depressed than nonmothers largely relies on data collected in the 1990s or earlier. Although the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic brought much attention to the stressfulness of parenting, we lack knowledge of how mothers fared relative to nonmothers in the 2000s and 2010s, before the pandemic. The authors investigate trends in the parenthood gap in happiness, depression, and self-rated health among women aged 18 to 59 years, using the 1996 to 2018 General Social Survey (n = 13,254) and the 1997 to 2018 National Health Interview Survey (n = 263,110). Results indicate that twenty-first-century mothers with younger children were better off than nonmothers on two measures, reporting less depression and better health. Mothers' "depression advantage” grew across this time. However, mothers with older children reported less happiness than nonmothers, a continued trend from the 1990s. The study underscores the importance of examining various well-being indicators across the changing contexts of parenting. © The Author(s) 2023.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic powerfully altered parents’ time schedules and time pressures as their lives shifted in unique and unprecedented ways. This chapter shows how three central forms of parents’ time during the pandemic - time parents spent with children, for children, and toward safeguarding children’s futures - was upended. I illustrate how the pandemic transformed these aspects of time, increasing parents’ demands. First, the quality of time with children became more stressful, although potentially more enjoyable and meaningful as well. Second, the time spent for children’s provision - in paid and unpaid labor - increased to very high levels, in large part due to how children’s education demands moved into homes. Third, the time parents invest toward the safeguarding of children’s futures became more emotionally fraught. Notably, the increased demands and pressures related to parental time varied by social class and gender, exacerbating inequalities. Looking toward the future, there may be countervailing effects that lessen the blow of pandemic time stressors, as new meanings surrounding the value of spending time with and for children may develop among families and societies. Especially important for parental justice will be changes in societal supports for the healthy allocation of parents’ time with children, for children, and toward safeguarding their futures. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, J. Michael Ryan;individual chapters, the contributors.