Teenagers' household and caring work: the relevance of 'secondary activities' in Australian time use surveys

Abstract

Time use studies are routinely used to comment on the distribution of labour between adults. More recently considerations of concurrent (or secondary) activities have been used to highlight the full social extent of childcare, and to show that mothers work disproportionately long hours. This paper addresses a blind spot in such studies: the domestic usefulness – or otherwise – of teenage children. It examines how measurements of secondary activities in Australian time use surveys contribute to understanding of the division of household, caring and total productive work between parents and teenagers. In this way the paper addresses a recent call by youth studies scholars to ‘bring the family back into focus‘. We found that secondary activities accentuate already inequitable division of labour between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. However, the results were not uniform, and show that a minority of teenagers shoulder substantial domestic responsibilities. The paper concludes by arguing that teenagers need to be included, conceptually as well as practically, in considerations of sustainable and equitable divisions of household and caring work.