Are Poor Working Mothers in South India Investing Less Time in the Next Generation?

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between women's work participation and childcare in South India through a disaggregated analysis of women's allocation of time for various childcare activities in low-income households. Women aged 15Á49, who had at least one living child below 10 years of age, and who lived in urban slums and in rural Scheduled Caste settlements were selected for this study. While regression analysis shows that working women spend significantly less time on childcare activities overall compared to non-working women, a disaggregated analysis illustrates that working women only spend less time playing with children. For all other activities, there is no difference between time spent by working and non-working women.

Indian Fathers: Family Dynamics and Investment Patterns

“…Rural mothers who worked outside of the home spent less time feeding and playing with children than rural mothers who were not employed outside of the home. Interestingly, the presence of other adult women in the household did not affect mother's time spent in childcare for either rural or urban mothers (Sivakami, 2010). The greater childcare involvement of mothers Psychology and Developing societies, 25, 2 (2013): 223-247 who were not employed may be an artefact of their greater availability to young children.…”

“…The emphasis on maternal employment and its 'effects' on family relationships has largely been in the area of breastfeeding, physical growth and childhood mortality (for example, Awasthi and Agarwal, 2003;Jain and Choudhry, 1993), on differences in childcare involvement Sivakami, 2010), and on the psychological well-being of older children in families in which mothers are employed outside of the home (Deb, Chatterjee and Walsh, 2010;Sharma and Dharmawat, 2009). The findings on paid employment and breastfeeding and maternal investment in childcare are rather mixed.…”

Maternal employment and child health in Nepal: The importance of job type and timing across the child's first five years

“…There are several potential mechanisms at work, again all with empirical support. First, because time is limited, when mothers spend more time in paid labor they may spend less time devoted to their children leading to worse child outcomes (Basu and Basu 1991;Miller and Urdinola 2010;Short et al 2002;Sivakami 2010). This time shortage manifests itself in several ways.…”

Getting the measurement right! quantifying time poverty and multitasking from childcare among mothers with children across different age groups in rural north India

“…Women with young children face an especially challenging predicament of balancing housework, childcare, as well as work outside the home (Becker, 1965;Chaturvedi et al, 2016;Gallaway & Alexandra, 2002;Sivakami, 1997Sivakami, , 2010. The limits of time combined with an overburdening of responsibilities lead to under-nutrition of young children, reliance upon older children to help care for young ones, and insufficient time for selfcare, cooking, rest, and leisure (Chaturvedi et al, 2016;Chopra & Zambelli, 2017;Jain & Zeller, 2015;Komatsu et al, 2018;Qi & Dong, 2018).…”

“…Previous studies have shown that higher parity along with pre-school children increase mothers' time on childcare compared to mothers of low parity or with older children, resulting in time poverty (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000;Bryant & Zick, 1996;Milkie et al, 2004;Sandberg & Hofferth, 2001;Sayer et al, 2004). In addition, other studies show that time burden also differs for women depending on whether they are employed or not as well as by the type of occupation they carry out (Cho, 2017;Sivakami, 2010). For example, a recent study shows that children of women working in low status occupations, which are often strenuous, are associated with a low nutritional status and high risk of mortality (Saabneh, 2017).…”