I care, you clean? Gendered effects of informal care on couple housework and leisure time

Marie Blaise, Sandrine Juin, Hélène Le Forner () and Quitterie Roquebert ()
Additional contact information
Marie Blaise: LISER - Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research
Sandrine Juin: ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel, INED - Institut national d'études démographiques
Hélène Le Forner: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UR - Université de Rennes
Quitterie Roquebert: UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg

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Abstract: Despite a shift towards more balanced gender roles, women continue to carry out the bulk of domestic work at home, while facing competing demands from outside the household. This paper investigates the gendered effect of providing care to an older parent outside the household on the allocation of time of individuals within couples. We focus on time spent on housework and on leisure with and without the partner. Data are drawn from the latest French Time-Use Survey (Enquête Emploi Du Temps, 2010). To tackle endogeneity issues, we instrument informal care by having at least one parent alive. Our results differ according to gender. When providing care, women tend to spend less time on housework. Irrespective of their own caregiving status, they spend more time on household chores when their male partners care for an older parent. In contrast, men's time allocation within the household appears to be less impacted by any informal care provision. The former effects are driven by women who perform less housework. The main potential mechanisms relate to gender norms, with differing responses in the use of outsourcing depending on whether the caregiver is the man or the woman and with reactions to a perceived violation of gender norms.

Keywords: Time allocation; Leisure; Housework; Informal care; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-10
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05689048v1
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