Do Parents Coordinate Their Work Schedules? A Comparison of Dutch, Flemish, and Italian Dual-Earner Households

Abstract

As a consequence of the rising number of dual earner households, many contemporary couples in Europe face two potentially conflicting job schedules when figuring out how to allocate their time over a week. In this article we study how dual-earner couples with children organise their working time in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands. We place working time coordination explicitly in a comparative framework to allow cross-country differences in time scheduling mechanisms to be revealed. We define working time coordination as an act that leads to hours of paid work performed by both parents at the same moment and of which the joint nature cannot be explained by factors other that the partners' potential to communicate on the timing of their work. Our main findings are that: (1) parents actively coordinate their working times in all three societies; (2) On average, Italian and Flemish dual earner parents tend to synchronise (increase their work time overlap) which indicates that parents aim at spending non-market time jointly; (3) Dutch dual earner parents tend to de-synchronize (decrease work time overlap) which indicates that the latter tend to maximize the amount of time that at least one parent is out of the job.

Couples’ Work Schedules and Child-Care Use in the Netherlands

“…Previous research on the timing of parental work and child care has mainly focused on the care that parents themselves provide (Carriero et al 2009;Täht and Mills 2012). We extended this line of research by considering nonparental care.…”

“…In the Netherlands, however, different labor legislation and regulations exist (Täht and Mills 2012), which may make Dutch nonstandard work more suitable for dividing care between two nonstandard working parents. Indeed, previous research has indicated that Dutch parents tend to de-synchronize their working hours, whereas parents from other countries tend to do the opposite (Carriero et al 2009). …”

“…These are dimensions of work schedules that, similar to the timing of work, may affect couples' child-care opportunities and constraints because they facilitate the combination of paid work and child care (Osnowitz 2005;Tijdens and Dragstra 2007;Van Wel and Knijn 2006). The effects of these other dimensions of work schedules have been examined for parental child care (Carriero et al 2009;Täht and Mills 2012), but they have not yet been examined for formal and informal child care, although similar mechanisms are applicable. So, when examining parents' child-care arrangements, multiple dimensions of work schedules need to be included, since these create different opportunities and constraints.…”

Couple Time and Partnership Quality: an Empirical Assessment using Diary Data

“…Some studies used preference for togetherness as a proxy for estimating the importance of time together in families (Carriero, Ghysels, & Van Klaveren, 2009;Hamermesh, 2000;Klaveren & Brink, 2007). However, they did not address directly the interrelation between time spent together in couples and marital quality.…”

Intra-Household Work Timing: The Effect on Joint Activities and the Demand for Child Care

“…Finding a correlation between the work timing estimate and the demand for child care is interesting from a policy perspective: more flexible working times could become one of the ingredients of a policy mix such that the focus is more on the work-family balance. Finding this balance is now often difficult for spouses in dual-earner households because labor market rigidities restrict them in the timing of their working hours (Carriero, Ghysels and Van Klaveren (2009)). …”