Couples’ daily childcare schedules: gendered patterns and variations

Abstract

Gender inequality of childcare provision is regarded as one of the main barriers to women’s labour-market careers. However, there is a scarcity of quantitative studies that examine fathers’ and mothers’ combined childcare. This research focuses on father’s and mother’s timing and type of childcare for co-resident couples with a young child. Using the two most recent UK Time-Use Surveys, the study derives typologies of couples’ childcare patterns with a particular focus on gender differences. The five patterns on weekdays and three patterns on weekend days highlight gender inequalities not just in the duration of parents’ time with their children but also in its timing. Mothers are more often than fathers involved during standard working hours. The childcare patterns vary only modestly by occupational class. This might be related to the fluidity of couples’ daily childcare patterns, which change with children’s ages and across days of the working week.