How does parental time relate to social class in a Nordic welfare state?

Anne Lise Ellingsæter,Marianne Nordli Hansen,Ragni Hege Kitterød

doi:10.1177/00016993211052079

Anne Lise Ellingsæter, Marianne Nordli Hansen + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/00016993211052079

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Abstract

Time intensive parenting has spread in Western countries. This study contributes to the literature on parental time use, aiming to deepen our understanding of the relationship between parental childcare time and social class. Based on time-diary data (2010–2011) from Norway, and a concept of social class that links parents’ amount and composition of economic and cultural capital, we examine the time spent by parents on childcare activities. The analysis shows that class and gender intersect: intensive motherhood, as measured by time spent on active childcare, including developmental childcare activities thought to stimulate children's skills, is practised by all mothers. A small group of mothers in the economic upper-middle class fraction spend even more time on childcare than the other mothers. The time fathers spend on active childcare is less than mothers’, and intra-class divisions are notable. Not only lower-middle class fathers, but also cultural/balanced upper-middle class fathers spend the most time on intensive fathering. Economic upper-middle and working-class fathers spend the least time on childcare. This new insight into class patterns in parents’ childcare time challenges the widespread notion of different cultural childcare logics in the middle class, compared to the working class.

Highlights

Cultural shifts in parenthood ideals have engendered a time-intensive, interactive approach to parenting in Western countries (e.g. Hays, 1996; McLanahan and Jacobsen, 2015)
This article contributes to the literature on intensive parenting and socioeconomic differences in parental time use, by addressing shortcomings in the dominant approach in the time use literature, based mainly on educational attainment
We provide new insight into the role of social class in generating differences in parents’ childcare time, by applying an approach to social class that links mothers’ and fathers’ cultural and economic capitals

Summary

Introduction

Cultural shifts in parenthood ideals have engendered a time-intensive, interactive approach to parenting in Western countries (e.g. Hays, 1996; McLanahan and Jacobsen, 2015). New childrearing norms have increased the time all parents spend on childcare, but studies find that highly educated mothers and fathers consistently spend more time on childcare and pursue childrearing strategies aimed at developing children’s social, cognitive, and linguistic skills Socioeconomic gaps in parents’ time use have widened over time in some countries (Altintas, 2016; Altintas and Sullivan, 2017; Sani and Treas, 2016). The advantages of intensive parenting accumulating among the well educated have raised concerns about children’s ‘diverging destinies’ (McLanahan and Jacobsen, 2015). The intensive parenting discourse has been criticised for representing a deterministic line of thinking, reproducing negative images of working-class families (e.g. Dermott and Pomati, 2016; Lee et al, 2014)

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