Childcare in Lithuania and Belarus: how gendered is parenting in Eastern European countries?

ABSTRACT

Research shows that even though the time women and men spend on housework has slowly converged in recent decades, the time mothers and fathers invest in childcare has not changed as much. This paper aims to contribute to the literature on childcare by focusing on the two Eastern European countries of Lithuania and Belarus, which took very different development paths after seceding from the Soviet Union in 1990. For our analysis, we use two recent datasets: the Families and Inequalities Survey from 2019 for Lithuania, and the Generations and Gender Survey 2020 Belarus Wave 1 from 2017. The analytic sample consists of 2114 mothers and fathers born between 1970 and 1984 with children under age 14. Our results reveal that in both Lithuania and Belarus, mothers perform more childcare tasks than fathers, and that, however, gendered parenting is more prominent in Lithuania than in Belarus.

KEYWORDS:

• Childcare
• gender
• Lithuania
• Belarus
• parenting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2008, Lithuania introduced two years of paid parental leave. In 2008-2010, the income replacement level was 100 percent for the first year and 80 percent for the second year. In 2011, some policy changes were introduced that enabled families to choose between taking one or two years of paid leave. The income of a family who takes one year of leave is replaced 100 percent. Meanwhile, the income of a family who takes two years of leave is replaced 70 per cent in the first year and 40 percent in the second year, but the parent who is on leave can work and earn income (Stankūnienė et al., 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from European Social Fund (project No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0020) under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).