Division of Childcare in Two-Biological-Parent and Step-Parent Households: Importance of Parental Gender and Type of Partnership

Abstract

In contrast to previous, single-gender studies on step-parents’ participation in childcare, I use the pooled Generations and Gender Survey to address the following questions: (i) Is there a gender difference in the potential divergence in how childcare is organized in two-biological-parent and step-parent households (i.e. are there larger differences between type-of-mother and type-of-father families)? and (ii) Does the type of partnership (marital/non-marital cohabitation) matter for how childcare is divided in step-parent households and if it does, does it matter more for step-mothers or step-fathers? The findings from the country-level fixed-effect models show that whereas the difference between type-of-father households is negligible, the gap between type-of-mother households is significantly larger, particularly, in non-marital cohabitations. The findings are more pronounced for the division of physical (e.g. taking care of child when sick) than interactive (e.g. helping child with homework) tasks. The proposition is put forward that these findings stem from the higher ambiguity which surrounds the parenting role of step-mothers compared to that of step-fathers.