Educational Differences in Parents’ Child Care Time in Cross-National Perspective: The Contexts of Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and United Kingdom

Pablo Gracia, University of Amsterdam
Joris Ghysels, Universiteit Maastricht

Does the effect of education on parents’ child care time differ across countries? Previous studies argued that educational variations in parents’ child care time are greater in countries where public institutions provide residual support to equalize family-work balance across socioeconomic groups, as compared to countries with stronger universal family support. This literature, however, has provided quite mixed and inconclusive findings. We use time-diary data for married mothers and fathers from Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and United Kingdom to investigate whether education has a different effect on parental care time across countries with different levels of public family support. We contribute to the literature by analyzing, not only the general educational effects on parental care time across these four countries, but also whether such variations are driven by differences in parents’ resources and time availability, such as income, paid work constraints, and outsourcing domestic labor.

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Presented in Session 156: Cross-National Contexts of Men's and Women's Family Work