Moms’ Time—Married or Not

Daniel Hamermesh

No 28317, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using time-diary data from the U.S. and six wealthy European countries, I demonstrate that non-partnered mothers spend slightly less time performing childcare, but much less time in other household activities than partnered mothers. Unpartnered mothers’ total work time—paid work and household production—is slightly less than partnered women’s. In the U.S. but not elsewhere they watch more television and engage in fewer other leisure activities. These differences are independent of any differences in age, race/ethnicity, ages and numbers of children, and household incomes. Non-partnered mothers feel slightly more pressured for time and much less satisfied with their lives. Analyses using the NLSY79 show that mothers whose partners left the home in the past two years became more depressed than those whose marriages remained intact. Coupled with evidence that husbands spend substantial time in childcare and with their children, the results suggest that children of non-partnered mothers receive much less parental care—perhaps 40 percent less—than other children; and most of what they receive is from mothers who are less satisfied with their lives.

JEL-codes: I31 J12 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lma
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published as Hamermesh, D.S. (2022). "Moms’ Time—Married or Not." In: Molina, J.A. (eds) Mothers in the Labor Market. Springer Publishers 2022 pp. 1-27.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28317.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Moms' Time - Married or Not (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28317

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28317

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().