Heterogeneities in Attitudes towards Maternal and Paternal Working Hours across the Family Life Cycle: Evidence from the German FReDA Panel

Martin Bujard , Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)
Inga Laß, The University of Melbourne
Leonie Kleinschrot, Federal Institute for Population Research

Previous surveys have usually collected attitudes towards parental employment on a very general level. We utilise unique data from the new German family demography panel study (FReDA) to uncover heterogeneities in attitudes towards parental employment. First, we exploit information on the specific number of working hours respondents consider ideal. Second, we investigate whether these ideal working hours vary with the (hypothetical) age of the youngest child. Furthermore, we examine how the empirical gap between ideal and actual parental employment develops over the family life cycle. Using multivariate regression, we also investigate the socio-demographic characteristics leading respondents to support a higher number of working hours for parents of children at different ages. The findings show that the ideal working time for mothers averaged 21 hours per week when the youngest child is aged 2, which increased consecutively to a full-time workload when children become of age. The gap between ideal and actual working time differs by parents’ gender: Mothers’ ideal working time is 5 hours longer than reality when the youngest child is 8-18 years old, but there is no gap for mothers of toddlers. In contrast, fathers of toddlers work 4.8 hours more than what is considered ideal. Multivariate analyses reveal that the ideal working times differ by respondent characteristics such as gender, region, age, occupation, and education. Overall, our study highlights important variations in the working time considered ideal for parents and in the gap between actual and ideal working hours, relevant for family policy and labour markets.

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 Presented in Session 39. Flash session Values and Attitudes about Family and Gender