Which fathers are the most involved in taking care of their toddlers in the UK? An investigation of the predictors of paternal involvement

Abstract

Economic provisioning continues to be the essence of ‘good’ fathering, and the work schedules associated with fathers' employment remain a key factor which shapes their involvement in childcare and domestic work at home. However, the relative impact of fathers' and mothers' employment hours on paternal involvement in childcare is unclear, and little is known about the longer-term impact, that is, whether a work arrangement organised when the child is under a year old has an impact on paternal involvement when the child is aged three. Here we focus on employed couples and explore the association that mothers' and fathers' employment hours have with paternal involvement when their child is three years old. Multivariate analysis using the UK's Millennium Cohort Study reveals that it is the mothers' employment hours when the child is aged three that has the largest association with paternal involvement in childcare at this stage in the child's life, independent of what hours the father works. Furthermore, both fathers' and mothers' employment hours when the child was nine months old have a longitudinal influence on paternal involvement when the child reaches three years old, but it is the hours worked by the mother when the child was aged nine months that has the stronger association with paternal involvement at age three. This suggests that mothers' work schedules are more important than fathers' for fostering greater paternal involvement in both the immediate and longer term.

Assurer la subsistance du ménage continue á se trouver au coeur des représentations sociales de la ‘bonne’ paternité, et les horaires de travail associés avec l'emploi paternel demeurent un facteur déterminant pour leur implication dans la garde des enfants et les tâches domestiques. Cependant, l'impact respectif des horaires maternels et paternels sur l'engagement des pères n'est toujours pas élucidé, et de même, l'effet á plus long terme des arrangements de temps de travail pris lorsqu'un enfant est en bas âge est peu documenté. C'est en particulier le cas de la persistance des arrangements pris lorsqu'un enfant est âgé de moins d'un an jusqu'à ce qu'il atteigne l'âge de trois ans. Cette étude se concentre sur les couples bi-actifs et examine le rôle joué par le temps de travail des pères et des mères sur l'engagement de ces derniers quand leur enfant atteint l'âge de trois ans. Basée sur une analyse multivariée de la Millennium Cohort Study, elle révèle que pour les enfants âgés de trois ans c'est la durée du temps de travail maternel qui est le plus étroitement associé avec l'implication paternelle, quel que soit le temps de travail de ces derniers. De plus, si la durée des horaires de travail tant des pères que des mères d'enfants de 9 mois exerce une influence significative sur l'implication des pères quand l'enfant atteint l'âge de trois ans, c'est néanmoins la durée du travail salarié maternel qui exerce l'influence la plus marquée sur l'implication paternelle à ce stade ultérieur. Ceci suggère que les horaires de travail des mères jouent un rôle plus déterminant que ceux des pères pour favoriser une plus grande implication de ces derniers à court comme à long terme.

Keywords:

• fathers
• fatherhood
• childcare
• gendered division of labour
• employment

Mots-clés:

• père
• paternité
• garde d'enfants
• division genrée du travail
• emploi

Notes

1. Mothers aged 16–64 and have at least one dependent child aged 0–18. Dependent children are all those under 16 and those aged 16–18 who have never married and are in full-time education.

2. A combined non-response and design weight was used for all analyses.

3. This also includes the removal of 96 (1%) primary caregiver fathers.

4. Although it is possible that there are other, mediating variables influencing fathers to become shared caregivers, which have not been picked up by this analysis.

5. This effect still holds when we control for current work hours according to a separate analysis that we ran to test the influence of hours worked nine months after childbirth.

6. Educational level was recorded when the child was nine months old. Some fathers may have obtained further qualifications by sweep two, but it is unlikely to be many given the majority of fathers remain in full-time employment over both sweeps and are, on average, aged 32.