Changes in Fathers' and Mothers' Time with Children: Spain, 2002-2010

Abstract

Parental time spent with children is a critical determinant for a child's cognitive, educational, and socio-emotional development. Using two waves of the Spanish Time Use Surveys, this study aims to investigate how mothers and fathers reorganized the time invested in physical and developmental childcare between 2002 and 2010. Results show that, during the period analyzed (marked by the start of the Great Recession in 2007), there had been: (i) a significant increase in the time fathers and mothers invested in childcare (i.e. an intensification of parenting); (ii) a gender convergence in physical care time, primarily driven by couples with very young children; and (iii) the gap in developmental childcare time invested between parents with and without a university degree remained unchanged. The decomposition of the results shows that the increase in father-child time is explained by a combination of changes in behavioural and compositional factors (i.e. increase in unemployment and level of education), whereas for changes in mother-child time, behavioural factors predominantly applied. These findings reinforce ideas of the rapid intensification of parenting, and a slow movement towards gender convergence in parental time spent with children.