Marriage, Cohabitation and Childcare: The US and Sweden

Abstract

Previous U.S. research has linked higher levels of parental time investment in their chil dren with higher levels of child well-being (e.g., Hofferth 2006). The findings imply that inequality in parental investment by social structure could lead to inequality in child well being. Parental union type has been identified as one such factor (Hofferth and Anderson 2003). Suggestive U.S. evidence is available that both married mothers and fathers spend more time with their children than their cohabiting counterparts (Hofferth 2006). At the same time, evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that there is little difference in parental investment between marriage and cohabitation (Kalenkoski et al. 2005). This conflicting and fragmentary evidence from the U.S. and the U.K. suggests the possibility that there is cross-national variation in the presence of differentials in parental investment across union types. However, previous cross-national studies of child care time (e.g., Gauthier et al. 2004; Hook 2006) have not systematically investigated these union type differentials. Testing for the presence of marriage-cohabitation gaps in the U.S. and Sweden are particularly useful; these countries provide contrasting national contexts in which marriage and cohabitation are placed. Sweden is characterized as a cultural-insti tutional setting that tends to treat marriage and cohabitation as similar unions (Bradley 1996). However, in the U.S., relative to marriage, cohabitation is characterized by more frequently disrupted unions (e.g., Biblarz et al. 1997), with more ambiguous parenting responsibilities (e.g., Artis 2007), potentially suppressing the relative level of parental investment in parental cohabitation. The aim of this analysis is to test two main hypotheses regarding cross-national union gaps: (1) The universal difference hypothesis that posits that, because cohabitation is a more frequently interrupted union with more ambiguity in parenting responsibilities, parents spend fewer minutes with their children in cohabitation than parents in marriage. (2) In contrast, the institutional context hypothesis posits that, only in institutional settings where cohabitation is considered to be an "unequal" marriage do cohabiting parents spend