Pressed for time: factors influencing child care based on time budgets

In the context of modern socio-economic changes and transformations of family structures, it is important to understand, how parents divide their time between housework, childcare and other activities in order to provide the necessary support to families. The article is based on the «Sample survey of the use of daily time by the population» conducted by Rosstat in 2019. To identify the factors influencing the time devoted to housework and child care, the experience of approximately seven thousand families with minor children was analyzed. Through a series of regression models built for each spouse in the context of weekdays and weekends, it has been shown that having small children (up to 1.5 years) significantly increases men’s time spent on household work on weekdays, mainly due to child care, and with the growth of the younger child, these costs decrease. For women, with an increase in the number of children under 18 years of age, the total time spent on household work increases, while the time spent on childcare decreases and the time spent on housekeeping increases. Living in rural areas and lack of higher education reduce the time spent on child care, but do not affect the total amount of household work. The effect of employment on the time devoted to housework is similar for spouses: it decreases if the respondent is employed and increases if the spouse is employed. Analysis of the time spent on selected types of activities on weekends showed similar patterns, but with some differences, emphasizing the specifics of home activities on weekends. The effects of income and employment on weekends follow the weekday trends, but on a smaller scale. A specific feature of the weekend is that female employment reduces the time spent on housework in general and child care, but increases the time spent on housekeeping without taking into account child care, thus compensating for the lack of weekdays.