Parents' work arrangements and gendered time use during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Objective This study uses time diaries to examine how parents' work arrangements shaped their time use at home and work during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Background The pandemic transformed home and work life for parents, disrupting employment and childcare. The shift to work from home offered more flexibility to manage increased care burdens, but the lack of separation between work and family also likely contributed to more challenging work environments, especially among mothers. Method This study relies on the 2017–2020 American Time Use Survey and matching to estimate changes in time use among parents working from home and on site in the pandemic relative to comparable parents prior to the pandemic. Results Data showed no overall increases in primary childcare time among working parents. Parents working from home during the pandemic, however, spent more time in the presence of children and supervising children, much in combination with paid work. Mothers working from home increased their supervisory parenting while working for pay more than fathers, and they more often changed their paid work schedules. The study's main findings were robust to gendered unemployment and labor force exits. Conclusion Parents, especially mothers, working from home responded to childcare demands through multitasking and schedule changes with potential negative effects on work quality and stress. Parents working on site during the pandemic experienced smaller changes in time use. Implications The pandemic has generated new inequalities between those with and without the flexibility to work from home, and exacerbated gender inequalities among those working from home.

Converging Intention and Diverging Intensity? Educational Differences in Developmental and Secondary Childcare Time in the U.S. from 2004 to 2019

“…The sudden changes in paid work and childcare arrangements due to the pandemic have likely introduced additional complexities to the inequality trends we identified. For instance, a recent study found that parents, particularly mothers, who could work from home due to COVID-19 significantly increased their time spent on secondary care (Lyttelton, Zang, & Musick, 2023). As remote work became more accessible for highly educated workers (Bick, Blandin, & Mertens, 2021), it is plausible that the trend of growing inequality in secondary care hours between highly educated and less educated mothers may have slowed or reversed after COVID-19.…”

Impacts of the COVID‐19 Lockdown on Gender Inequalities in Time Spent on Paid and Unpaid Work in Singapore

“…Based on the three perspectives, we would have consistent predictions relating to the heterogeneous effects of family resources. Since mothers with more resources are more likely to work from home during the pandemic and, therefore, are less likely to lose their jobs or shorten their work hours (Lyttelton, Zang, and Musick 2022), the time availability perspective would imply that gender gaps in paid work hours and domestic tasks will grow more among households with fewer resources. Subsequently, mothers with more resources are less likely to experience substantial income losses compared to their less-resourced counterparts (Bateman and Ross 2021; (online) Montenovo et al 2022).…”

“…and substantial impacts on nearly all aspects of work and daily life that have multifaceted implications for global gender equality (International Labour Organization 2020; Sachs et al 2020). Unprecedented widespread shifts to remote work, school closures, and job losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have substantially changed gender inequalities in time spent on paid and unpaid work (Alon et al 2020;Dunatchik et al 2021;Chung et al 2021;Lyttelton, Zang, and Musick 2022;Augustine and Prickett 2022). For example, in the United States, mothers faced more drastic changes than fathers in their labor market contribution, as employment in femaledominated industries tended to be more heavily affected by the pandemic than in male-dominated industries (Alon et al 2020).…”

“…Evidence from Western countries (i.e., countries in Australasia, Europe, or the Americas) generally shows that mothers still spent much more time on both housework and childcare than fathers during the pandemic (Giurge, Whillans, and Yemiscigil 2021;Costoya et al 2022;Zamberlan, Gioachin, and Gritti 2021;Hank and Steinbach 2021). Although there is some evidence on the increasing male contribution to domestic work (Del Boca et al 2020;Sevilla and Smith 2020;Craig and Churchill 2020;Lyttelton, Zang, and Musick 2022), gender gaps in time spent on household labor tended to have only decreased in the early stage of the pandemic (Zamberlan, Gioachin, and Gritti 2022;Carlson and Petts 2021;Carlson, Petts, and Pepin 2020;Sánchez, Fasang, and Harkness 2021).…”

Working from home during COVID‐19: What does this mean for the ideal worker norm?

“…First, women's preference to continue to work from home or hybridly can potentially embed traditional gender roles in the home as well as the workplace through the gendered use of time (Craig & Churchill, 2020; Kurowska, 2020). Recent research highlights that the pandemic entrenched traditional time usage patterns with women undertaking the bulk of domestic and caring responsibilities as families worked and studied from home (see Craig & Churchill, 2020; Craig & Churchill, 2021; Lyttelton et al., 2023; Yavorsky et al., 2021). Time use is a well‐established field of literature (see Craig, 2006; Sayer, 2005), which tends to accept concepts of time uncritically (for exceptions, see Fan & Moen, 2022; Rafnsdóttir & Heijstra, 2013) and only considers time quantitatively (Davies, 1994).…”