School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 19
-
ItemActive Participation and Well-Being Among the Elderly in Belgium and the USA: A Cross-National Time-Use Perspective(Springer Verlag, 2020-05-28)Active participation of the elderly is a recognized response to address the societal and individual challenges of rising life expectancy such as releasing the pressure of age-related public spending, reducing social isolation and improving well-being. How much time older people devote to active participation and whether their time allocation is associated with well-being remains under-investigated. Using time-use data from Belgium (n = 1384) and the USA (n = 2133), we investigate the time older people (65–80 years) spent on active participation and examine how this relates to their life satisfaction as an indicator of wellbeing. The countries vary in the amount of time spent on paid employment and volunteering, but not on informal help. Belgian older people spend much less time on paid employment than their American counterparts. This implies more are available to volunteer and provide informal help. Yet participation rates in these activities are higher in the USA. Multivariate analyses show that associations between active participation and life satisfaction vary between both countries and within both countries by gender and age. Overall, positive associations between paid work and volunteering and life satisfaction suggest that governments would do well to mobilize elderly into active participation, especially in Belgium. Negative associations between informal help and life satisfaction suggest governments should provide greater support for informal carers.
-
ItemThe Effect of a First Born Child on Work and Childcare Time Allocation: Pre-post Analysis of Australian Couples(Springer Verlag, 2017-03-01)This paper uses Australian data from a national representative sample of Australian couples having their first child. Using data from before and after the birth of the child on a range of variables, including economic resources, gender attitudes, workplace flexibility, and availability of non-parental childcare, we first model the factors are associated with the decision to remain in work or not after the birth of the first child. The main finding here is that childbirth has a major impact on mothers’ paid work-time, whereas for fathers it has very little impact. Factors that are related to a mother’s decision to remain in work or not include the absolute (but not relative) pay of each parent, the father’s workplace flexibility, and paid parental leave available to the mother. We then model the factors that govern, for those mothers remaining in paid work, how much paid work they undertake. We find that changing employers is related to mothers’ work hours, as are absolute post-birth salaries, as is the relative pay of each partner. As with the decision to work or not, the availability of paid parental leave to the mother is significantly related to the amount of work-time for those mothers that do continue to work. Similarly, the use of external childcare is positively associated with maternal work hours. Finally, we model the factors that determine childcare time allocation and find that for neither parent do pre-birth economic resources significantly affect childcare time, once a decision about basic work patterns has been made. Gender role attitudes affect childcare time decisions, unlike work time decisions.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableDual-Parent Joblessness, Household Work and Its Moderating Role on Children's Joblessness as Young Adults(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2020-01-10)Using data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, we examine whether living in jobless families where parents devote more time to household work shields children against their own joblessness in the future. We draw on a representative sample of young adults who were aged between 4 and 17 years in 2001 and lived with both parents through to 2007 (N = 1,852). A series of mixed-effect regression models suggest that dual-parent joblessness is associated with an increase in families’ overall household production...
-
ItemShares of Housework Between Mothers, Fathers and Young People: Routine and Non-routine Housework, Doing Housework for Oneself and Others(Springer Verlag, 2018-02-01)We use data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey to investigate shares of domestic work along two dimensions; routine and non-routine activities, and housework done for the whole household versus housework done for oneself only. We argue that the latter is an underutilised marker of responsibility for household management and serving others. Exploiting data from matched household members, we examine relative shares of fathers and mothers, and also of co-resident young people aged 15-34 (416 households), to include inputs from the younger generation as well as the parental couple. Mothers do the greatest share of routine housework and housework for others; parents are relatively equal in the shares of non-routine housework and housework done for themselves only. Young people take on a minimal share of total household work, particularly tasks done for others in the family. Parents’ employment configuration is associated with adjustments in shares between them, with no effect on children’s shares.
-
ItemThe Role of Trusted Adults in Young People's Social and Economic Lives(Sage Publications Inc, 2018-07-01)In moving toward adulthood, young people make formative choices about their social and economic engagement while developmentally seeking autonomy from parents. Who else then contributes to guiding young people during this formative life-stage? This article explores one contributing relationship: relationships with trusted adults. Past research has shown that these adults provide motivational, emotional, and instrumental support to young people, but less is known about how and why their support is appropriate particularly during young adulthood. Using qualitative data from an Australian Research Council–funded study, the article explores how and why trusted adults are important and influential, detailing how they talk, what they offer, and how their role differs according to young people’s level of engagement or disengagement from education/employment. The article explores how the trusted adult relationship is developmentally appropriate for young people and outlines implications for policy and future research.
-
ItemCoronavirus, domestic labour and care: Gendered roles locked down(SAGE Publications, 2020-07-24)The Covid-19 pandemic turned daily lives upside down. Lockdowns and physical distancing meant hundreds of thousands of people switched to working from home, significantly blurring the temporal and spatial boundaries between paid work, domestic labour and caring for others. This article explores gender relations, and the division of employment, domestic labour and care, drawing on early results from an online survey, Work and Care in the Time of Covid-19, carried out between 7 May and 4 June 2020.
-
ItemWorking and Caring at Home: Gender Differences in the Effects of Covid-19 on Paid and Unpaid Labor in Australia(Informa UK Limited, 2020)The COVID-19 pandemic caused working from home to spike abruptly. This had implications for those with caring responsibilities, particularly women, who shoulder most unpaid domestic work. But what about men? This paper reports early results from a survey of Australian men and women, conducted during state-imposed lockdown in May 2020 (N=2772). Respondents were asked their average daily time in housework, household management, and care (active and supervisory), and about time pressure, spare time and satisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid labor, before and during the pandemic. Unpaid work rose significantly. Women still did most, but men’s childcare time increased more in relative terms, so average gender gaps narrowed. The relative gap in housework remained. For many, the lockdown generated lower subjective time pressure, but dissatisfaction with balance of paid and unpaid work rose markedly, and from a much higher base for women. Gender gaps in this measure remained wide.
-
ItemFeeling Rushed: Gendered Time Quality, Work Hours, Nonstandard Work Schedules, and Spousal Crossover(Wiley, 2017-02-01)The authors investigated gender differences in couple parents' subjective time pressure, using detailed Australian time use data (n=756 couples with minor children). They examined how family demand, employment hours, and nonstandard work schedules of both partners relate to each spouse's non‐employment time quality (“pure” leisure, “contaminated” leisure, multitasking housework, and child care) and subjective feelings of being rushed or pressed for time. Mothers averaged more contaminated leisure and less pure leisure and did much more unpaid work multitasking than fathers. These results suggest that these differences in time quality do partially account for mothers feeling more rushed than fathers. Weekend work was associated with mothers having less pure leisure, but not contaminated leisure. The opposite was found for fathers. Spousal work characteristics also related to time use and feeling rushed in gendered ways, with male long work hours positively associated with higher time pressure for mothers as well as the fathers who worked them.
-
ItemConforming to intensive parenting ideals: willingness, reluctance and social context(Policy Press, 2017-03-01)It is widely argued that parenting has intensified in recent decades and that family life has become increasingly child-centred. Intensive parenting represents a cultural shift in parenting behaviour that requires enactment at the individual level. Moreover, adherence to intensive parenting standards is often presented as a conscious/willing adoption, whereby parents choose to parent in a particular way. This article explores why parents conform to intensive parenting ideals. Data are drawn from in-depth interviews with 29 parents in Sydney, Australia, during which they reflected on the differences between their children’s childhood and their own. The article argues that while parents conform to intensive parenting standards, they do so at least partly because social context curtails their ability to do otherwise. Failure to uphold intensive parenting ideals was associated with several perceived risks for both parents and children.
-
ItemGender, mobility and parental shares of daily travel with and for children: a cross-national time use comparison(Elsevier, 2019-04-01)Daily mobility varies by gender and is likely related to contextual factors including the gender division of employment and family work, options for modes of transport, and support for work-family reconciliation. This paper compares travel time patterns of men and women using nationally representative time-diary data from Australia, the UK, Spain and Finland (n = 14,176). Despite similarities in men and women's total travel time within countries, results show substantial gender variation in the purpose of daily travel, the transport mode used, who is present, and the way parents in couple-headed households share travel with and for children in relative terms. The extent of the gender gaps vary cross-nationally in ways consistent with prevalent patterns in the gendered division of labour and social parenting norms, but relative gaps in child-serving travel were universal, attesting to the ubiquity of gendered mobility constraints in households with children.