Full Citation
Title: Ten Economic Facts on How Mothers Spend Their Time
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a toll. The pressures that mothers of young children (defined throughout as having a child under the age of 13 in the household) have faced over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic are legion. Pressure to stay in the labor market as schools closed and child-care networks collapsed (Madowitz and Boesch 2020). Pressure to facilitate their children’s formal education and provide child care as the economy shut down, the labor market contracted, and families struggled to make ends meet. Pressure to work, care, cook, clean, keep safe, keep afloat. From the outset of the pandemic, mothers faced pressure to “do it all” but with fewer resources and support than before. While inequities persist in many aspects of women’s lives, some of the stickier problems for women stem from the difficult choices they face in reconciling competing demands on their time. Even before the pandemic, caregiving and family responsibilities disproportionately fell on women and on mothers; in 2018, a third of women who reported wanting a job but who were not actively looking for work cited family responsibilities as the reason why (Nunn, Parsons, and Shambaugh 2019). For each American to reach their full potential and for the American economy to grow, it is essential to remove barriers to women’s full and equitable participation in the labor market. But to remove those barriers and support mothers’ economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic requires an understanding of the problem. As we celebrate Women’s History Month and as we observe the anniversary of the onset of the COVID-19 recession, we review trends in women’s labor force participation and document how mothers of children under age 13 have changed how they spend their time. In this set of economic facts, we detail some of the ways in which work, time, and caregiving have changed for mothers with young children from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic through 2020 until early 2021.
Url: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Maternal_Time_Use_Facts_final-1.pdf
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Authors: Bauer, Lauren; Buckner, Eliana; Estep, Sara; Moss, Emily; Welch, Morgan
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Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - ATUS
Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Work, Family, and Time
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