Flexplace Work and Partnered Fathers’ Time in Housework and Childcare

Abstract

Access to and use of work-family policies, especially by men, has direct implications for advancing gender equality. Using the 2017-18 American Time Use Survey Leave Module, the authors investigated the association between time spent working from home – a workplace benefit known as “flexplace” – among fathers in different-sex partnerships (n = 1,956) and their time spent in housework and childcare. The authors also considered whether these associations vary by their partners’ employment status. Findings show fathers’ use of flexplace was associated with increases in fathers’ time spent in routine housework, conditional that their partners worked full-time. Concomitantly, fathers’ use of flexplace was also associated with increases in their time spent providing childcare, particularly routine care, regardless of their partners’ labor force participation. This study updates our understanding of the links between fathers’ use of work-family benefits and their contributions to domestic labor at home, and expands our understanding of the viability of flexplace policies for achieving more equitable divisions of labor in families.

Changes in Parents’ Domestic Labor During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Findings that more time at home for men during the pandemic is associated with more childcare responsibilities and a more egalitarian sharing of childcare tasks is consistent with recent research on paternity leave and job flexibility (Bünning 2015;Carlson, Petts, and Pepin 2020;Holmes et al 2020;Lyttleton, Zang, and Musick 2020;Petts and Knoester 2018).…”

Working From Home and the Division of Housework and Childcare Among Dual Earner Couples During the Pandemic in the UK

“…First of all, although men generally increased their share of housework and care during the COVID-19 lockdown periods, women continued to do the majority of the (additional) care and housework during this period, confirming what has been found many studies of other countries (Craig & Churchill, 2020;Petts & Carlson, 2020;Yerkes et al, 2020). This study adds to existing evidence that flexible working of men may help reduce the unequal division of housework and care among heterosexual couples (see, Carlson et al, 2020b). Our study shows that men who were able to work flexibly were better able to share some of that additional burden of housework and childcare, allowing for a better distribution of the roles within heterosexual coupled families.…”

More Time with the Family? Workplace Flexibility Policies and Fathers’ Time with Children

“…Kim (2020) finds no links between fathers' flexplace use and their frequency of participating in routine or enriching childcare activities. In contrast, those using more recent data from the ATUS Leave Module show that regular working from home is associated instead with increases in childcare time (Lyttelton et al, 2020), including routine childcare activities (Carlson et al, 2021), and total time with children (Pabilonia & Vernon, 2020). Beyond the amount of father-child time, working from home may shift the types and timing of activities: fathers spend more time in meals and travel when children are present (Genadek & Hill, 2017).…”

“…I include covariates that may be linked to fathers' time with children and their access to and use of flexibility policies, including: educational attainment (less than high school=reference, high school graduate, some college, college graduate); father's employment status (part-time, under 35 hours=reference; full-time, 35-50 hours; overwork, 50+ hours); spouse's employment status (not employed=reference, part-time employed, full-time employed); professional occupation (=1); cohabiting (=1) or married; race (white=reference, Black, Latinx, and other); family income (<$25,000=reference); the number of own household children under 8 This definition follows recent work using the ATUS Leave Module (e.g., Carlson et al, 2021;Pabilonia & Vernon, 2020). Fathers are asked whether they have access to flexplace; whether they ever use; and whether there are workdays they work only at home.…”

“…This study overcomes challenges faced by previous research and complicates our understanding of how flexibility policies might benefit fathers and families. The ATUS Leave Module connects nationally representative data from time diaries to measures of flexibility policy use and access (Carlson et al, 2021). I also extend recent research on flexibility policies and parent-child time that uses time diaries by considering a comprehensive range of measures of father-child time across activities and the presence of the mother.…”