Change in the gender division of domestic work after mothers or fathers took leave: exploring alternative explanations

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how the durations of childcare leaves taken by mothers and fathers in Germany relate to the gender division of housework and childcare after labour market return. It examines to what extent changes in economic resources because of leave take-up may account for adaptations in the division of domestic work of dual-earner couples. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1992–2012) on about 800 couples with a first or second birth, we applied OLS regression models with lagged dependent variables. The results suggested that dual-earner couples where mothers took longer leaves experienced a greater shift towards a gender-traditional division of domestic labour after childbirth. Fathers’ leave take-up was associated with a more equal division of family work. Lower relative earnings, e.g. as a result of changes in job-related skills after the leave, did not account for the shift in the gender division of family work.

KEYWORDS:

• Childcare
• gender division of labour
• housework
• parenthood
• parental leave
• family policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Pia S. Schober is a professor of Sociology at the University of Tübingen. Previously, she was a senior research associate at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and held two postdoctoral research fellowships funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and by the British Academy at the University of Cambridge. In 2009, she completed a PhD in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. In her research, she is interested in applying quantitative methods to investigate gender inequalities across the life course, intersections with social inequalities and the impact of family policies.

Gundula Zoch is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Bamberg, Germany. Previously, she held a 3-year doctoral fellowship at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences, funded by the German Excellence Initiative. Her main research interests include gender and social inequalities in paid and unpaid work and how social policies impact these processes as well as social stratification over the life course. Recent publications investigate the expansion of public childcare and maternal employment as well as gender ideologies in Germany.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a research grant from the Jacobs Foundation [grant number 2013-1063].