IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/poprpr/v41y2022i6d10.1007_s11113-022-09735-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

US Parents’ Domestic Labor During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel L. Carlson

    (University of Utah)

  • Richard J. Petts

    (Ball State University)

Abstract

It is important to assess the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for gender equality, but we know little about US parents’ domestic arrangements beyond the early days of the pandemic or how simultaneous changes in employment, earnings, telework, gender ideologies, and care supports may have altered domestic arrangements. This study assesses changes in parents’ domestic labor during the first year of the pandemic using fixed-effects regression on data from a longitudinal panel of 700 different-sex partnered US parents collected at three time points: March, April, and November 2020. Parents’ divisions of housework and childcare became more equal early in the pandemic, but divisions of housework reverted toward pre-pandemic levels by Fall 2020 whereas fathers’ shares of childcare remained elevated. Changes in parents’ divisions of domestic labor were largely driven by changes in parents’ labor force conditions, but shifts in gender ideology also mattered. Decreases in fathers’ labor force participation and increases in telecommuting in April portended increases in fathers’ shares of domestic tasks. As fathers increased their time in paid work and returned to in-person work by fall, their shares of domestic labor fell. Shifts toward more traditional gender ideologies were also associated with decreases in fathers’ shares of childcare in Fall 2020. Overall, results point to remote work as a possible means for achieving greater gender equality in domestic labor among couples, but shifts toward traditional gender ideologies may suppress any gains stemming from supportive work–family policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel L. Carlson & Richard J. Petts, 2022. "US Parents’ Domestic Labor During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(6), pages 2393-2418, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:41:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11113-022-09735-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s11113-022-09735-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11113-022-09735-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11113-022-09735-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Günseli Berik & Ebru Kongar, 2013. "Time Allocation of Married Mothers and Fathers in Hard Times: The 2007--09 US Recession," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 208-237, July.
    2. Richard J. Petts & Daniel L. Carlson & Joanna R. Pepin, 2021. "A gendered pandemic: Childcare, homeschooling, and parents' employment during COVID‐19," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 515-534, July.
    3. Frances Goldscheider & Eva Bernhardt & Trude Lappegård, 2015. "The Gender Revolution: A Framework for Understanding Changing Family and Demographic Behavior," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(2), pages 207-239, June.
    4. Coppock, Alexander, 2019. "Generalizing from Survey Experiments Conducted on Mechanical Turk: A Replication Approach," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 613-628, July.
    5. Kevin E. Levay & Jeremy Freese & James N. Druckman, 2016. "The Demographic and Political Composition of Mechanical Turk Samples," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(1), pages 21582440166, March.
    6. Scott Schieman & Leah Ruppanner & Melissa A. Milkie, 2018. "Who Helps with Homework? Parenting Inequality and Relationship Quality Among Employed Mothers and Fathers," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 49-65, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Kurowska & Agnieszka Kasperska, 2024. "Work from Home and Perceptions of Career Prospects of Employees with Children," Working Papers 2024-08, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard J. Petts & Daniel L. Carlson & Joanna R. Pepin, 2021. "A gendered pandemic: Childcare, homeschooling, and parents' employment during COVID‐19," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 515-534, July.
    2. Andrew Taeho Kim & Matt Erickson & Yurong Zhang & ChangHwan Kim, 2022. "Who is the “She” in the Pandemic “She-Cession”? Variation in COVID-19 Labor Market Outcomes by Gender and Family Status," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(3), pages 1325-1358, June.
    3. Wilkin, Carla & Ferreira, Aldónio & Rotaru, Kristian & Gaerlan, Luigi Red, 2020. "Big data prioritization in SCM decision-making: Its role and performance implications," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    4. Barbara S. Okun & Liat Raz‐Yurovich, 2019. "Housework, Gender Role Attitudes, and Couples' Fertility Intentions: Reconsidering Men's Roles in Gender Theories of Family Change," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(1), pages 169-196, March.
    5. Anna Baranowska-Rataj & Anna Matysiak, 2016. "The Causal Effects of the Number of Children on Female Employment - Do European Institutional and Gender Conditions Matter?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 343-367, September.
    6. Lisa Van Landschoot & Helga de Valk & Jan Van Bavel, 2017. "Fertility among descendants of immigrants in Belgium: The role of the partner," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 36(60), pages 1827-1858.
    7. Héctor Bellido & Miriam Marcén, 2019. "Fertility and the business cycle: the European case," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 1289-1319, December.
    8. Deena A. Isom & Hunter M. Boehme & Toniqua C. Mikell & Stephen Chicoine & Marion Renner, 2021. "Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-20, July.
    9. John Hulland & Jeff Miller, 2018. "“Keep on Turkin’”?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 789-794, September.
    10. Chen, Nana & Xu, Hangtian, 2021. "Why has the birth rate relatively increased in China's wealthy cities?," MPRA Paper 105960, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Giyeon Seo & Tanya Koropeckyj‐Cox & Sanghag Kim, 2022. "Correlates of Contemporary Gender Preference for Children in South Korea," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 48(1), pages 161-188, March.
    12. Rodríguez-González, Ana, 2021. "The Impact of the Female Advantage in Education on the Marriage Market," Working Papers 2021:5, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    13. Zuzanna Brzozowska & Eva Beaujouan & Kryštof Zeman, 2022. "Is Two Still Best? Change in Parity-Specific Fertility Across Education in Low-Fertility Countries," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(5), pages 2085-2114, October.
    14. Jolene Tan, 2023. "Perceptions towards pronatalist policies in Singapore," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1-27, September.
    15. Alessandra Trimarchi & Jan Van Bavel, 2017. "Pathways to marital and non-marital first birth: the role of his and her education," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 15(1), pages 143-179.
    16. Joanna Szczepaniak-Sienniak, 2021. "Transformations of State Family Policy in Poland from 1989 to the Pandemic Period," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(4B), pages 883-900.
    17. Leen Marynissen & Eleonora Mussino & Jonas Wood & Ann-Zofie Duvander, 2019. "Fathers’ Parental Leave Uptake in Belgium and Sweden: Self-Evident or Subject to Employment Characteristics?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-21, November.
    18. Elena Bastianelli & Daniele Vignoli, 2021. "Instability of Employment Careers and Union Dissolution. A Complex Micro-level Relation," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2021_04, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    19. Valentina A. Bali & Lindon J. Robison & Richard Winder, 2020. "What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    20. Coco Bastiaansen & Emmie Verspeek & Hedwig van Bakel, 2021. "Gender Differences in the Mitigating Effect of Co-Parenting on Parental Burnout: The Gender Dimension Applied to COVID-19 Restrictions and Parental Burnout Levels," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-10, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:41:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11113-022-09735-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.