Almost everywhere around the world, women spend two to three times more time on housework than men. This disproportionate division of domestic responsibilities between genders has been identified as a key reason for the gender pay gap and the reduction in women’s paid work time when they become parents. The expectation that women will take on the majority of household chores and caregiving responsibilities has created a barrier to their participation in the labor market and their ability to advance in their careers. This reinforces traditional gender roles and perpetuates gender inequality in both the workplace and the home. An increasing number of countries are adopting social policies to promote gender equality, designed to address the specific needs and challenges faced by women and men in different areas of life, such as education, employment, and family life. 

Reasons for a change

Family policies in Great Britian used to reinforce a gendered division of labor, with expensive and inadequate childcare being the prevalent reason, but things are gradually changing. Currently, a maximum of 52 weeks of maternity leave is available, of which a maximum of 39 weeks is paid. New fathers have only up to two weeks of paid paternity leave, available since 2003. Since 2010, some measures have been introduced to promote gender equality in the domestic division of labor, such as increased free childcare provision and, since 2015, shared parental leave (SPL), which allows parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between them after the birth or adoption of a child. SPL is designed to give parents more flexibility in how they take time off work to care for their child, and to encourage more fathers to take an active role in parenting.

The annual free childcare provision was increased from 412 hours in 1998 to 570 hours in 2010. It has now been extended to all parents of three- and four-year-olds in England and those of two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. Meanwhile, gender equality in the UK’s labor market has made progress since the early 1990s, with a rise in women’s employment rates and a decrease in the gender pay gap: women’s employment rates rose from 62% in 1989 to 72% in 2023, with the largest increase for women with dependent children. The corresponding rate was 78% for men in 2023. The gender pay gap decreased from 27.5% in 1997 to 14.3% in 2023. Additionally, the proportion of women in senior management positions increased from 19% in 2012 to 34% in 2020.

Reasons for stagnation

The cost of childcare services remains a significant barrier to women’s participation in the labor market; the average cost of 25 hours of childcare per week for a child under two was £127 in 2021.  In addition, men’s contribution to housework and childcare is barely increasing. From 2000 to 2014, the childcare time reported by fathers remained stable at one hour during weekdays and one and a half hours during weekends (Henz 2019). While some measures have been introduced to promote gender equality in the domestic division of labor, such as increased free childcare provision and shared parental leave, the uptake of shared parental leave has been low, with only 2% of eligible parents taking advantage of the policy. As societies strive to create more family-friendly policies, the impact of family formation on people’s lives has become a topic of interest. Are women and men experiencing more similar shifts in time allocation when they get married and have children? Are these policies creating a more equitable distribution of work and family responsibilities?

The changed and unchanged impact of family formation on time use 

In a recent study (Zhou and Kan 2023) we shed light on these questions, exploring the impact of partnership and parenthood on the gender division of labor in Great Britain over the past 30 years. We found that prior to the 2010s, women’s housework time increased by approximately 2.5 hours, while that of men increased by about 0.8 hours when they were in partnerships. However, after the 2010s, both women and men increased their housework time by the same amount of approximately 1 hour when in a partnership (Figure 1).

Regarding parenthood, we found that women reduced their paid work time by between 12.3 and 13.8 hours, approximately, when they had their first child, while men’s paid work time decreased by between 0.63 and 2.16 hours when they became fathers (Figure 2 and Figure 3). In other words, the substantial gendered impact of parenthood on paid work has remained relatively unchanged over the past 30 years.

It is noteworthy that the increase in women’s housework time after having a child has decreased over the last 30 years: in the 1990s, it increased by 5.2 hours, in the 2000s by 4.8 hours, and in the 2010s by 4.3 hours. However, the increase in men’s housework when they become fathers has remained stable at approximately 0.75 hours (Figure 2 and Figure 4). 

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that while the traditional gender roles associated with partnership formation have weakened over time, motherhood still reduces women’s paid work time in Great Britain to a similar extent as it did 30 years ago. 

These findings highlight the persistence of traditional gender roles and the need for policies that promote a more equitable distribution of work and family responsibilities. In other words, the gender revolution in the division of labor among parents has stalled in Great Britain, and family policies have not been successful in increasing mothers’ paid work time and fathers’ unpaid work time.

References

Henz, Ursula. 2019. “Fathers’ involvement with their children in the United Kingdom: Recent trends and class differences.”  Demographic Research 40 (30):865-896.

Zhou, Muzhi, and Man-Yee Kan. 2023. “The Gendered Impacts of Partnership and Parenthood on Paid Work and Unpaid Work Time in Great Britain, 1992–2019.”  Population and Development Review 49 (4):829-857. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12593

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Rearing young children is money- and time-consuming nowadays. Most often, labour market opportunities must be sacrificed to meet the care needs of children. Household specialization seems to be a smart decision, where one partner who earns more money pursues their working career unaffected by family responsibilities, and the other partner sacrifices their labour market opportunities and takes care of family life. This arrangement minimizes the family’s financial cost of parenthood, and if it is the father who earns and the mother who cares, this model is consonant with people’s gender expectations and is socially approved for childrearing. Not surprisingly, therefore, families with a male primary breadwinner and a female primary caregiver remain common.

However, this traditional division of labour has encountered many challenges in the past few decades. Growing economic uncertainties and the rising cost of living make the family model with only one full-time worker a risky choice. Jobs are becoming less stable, which also threatens partnership stability and deters people from having more children. It is becoming more difficult to make the decision to leave the labour market, even temporarily (Luppi 2016).

We also know that while childcare services could massively alleviate the time pressure of rearing young children, they remain extremely expensive and inaccessible for many families in England. If means-tested cash transfers from the government are excluded, England is the OECD country where parents pay the most for childcare. A full-time nursery fee for a child under two is £242 per week in 2019, compared to £159 in 2008. Childcare benefits in England have slowly expanded but remain severely limited. In the 1990s, parents could apply for vouchers to cover certain childcare expenses. In the 2000s, for children aged 3 to 4, parents were entitled to 12.5 to 15 hours of free childcare per week for 33 to 38 weeks per year. Since September 2017, working parents with children aged 3 to 4 have been entitled to 30 hours of free childcare per week.¹With this recent expansion of free childcare coverage, the need for an adult to stay at home and provide care has been reduced, and more mothers with young dependent children are working. Figure 1 shows a growing fertility level from 2000 with women’s increased labour force participation. There is also a change in social attitudes. Fewer people now believe that women should stay at home and care for young children, although the change in norms and attitudes has been slow and incomplete (British Social Attitudes 2018).

A re-evaluation and new evidence

A recent study (Zhou and Kan 2019) re-examines the often-assumed positive relationship between the gendered division of labour and fertility using nationally representative, large-scale, and long-term longitudinal data for the United Kingdom. We suspect that this positive link has weakened over the past 30 years given the changes discussed above. The gendered division of labour is measured by pooling the couple’s participation in both the labour market and housework and then classifying couples into various levels of gender traditionalism. This classification considers how couples share their efforts in paid and unpaid work and is a direct and concrete measure of the gendered division of labour.

We classified all married and cohabiting couples of prime working and childbearing age into five types with respect to the division of labour: the male-breadwinner type (most traditional, 27.8%), the modified male-breadwinner type where the female partner works part-time or earns much less than the male partner (23.1%), the dual-earner type where both partners work full-time and share housework more or less equally (39.3%), the female-breadwinner type (least traditional, 3.2%), and the precarious type where neither partner works full-time (6.6%). Figure 2 shows that the proportion of couples with a male breadwinner and female homemaker has declined steadily since 1991, and the dual-earner type is becoming more common.

Following the same couples over time, we analyse the likelihood of a birth following a change in the division of labour type. For example, a dual-earner couple could shift to a male-breadwinner model if the female partner loses her job. A significant weakening trend in the positive link between the traditional male-earner model and childbearing is noted. In the 1990s, if a dual-earner couple adopted the traditional male-breadwinner model, they were three times more likely to have a child in the following years. In contrast, from 2009 to 2017, the shift from a dual-earner model into the male-breadwinner arrangement had little impact on the likelihood of a subsequent birth.

We also examine what happens to a couple’s division of labour type when they have children. As expected, the birth of a child is strongly correlated with a more traditional division of labour. Couples having a first child were almost 20 times more likely to adopt a traditional division of labour arrangement in the 1990s. In recent years, however, from 2009 to 2017, couples having a first child are only about 8 times more likely to adopt the traditional division of labour arrangement, indicating that men’s and women’s responses to parenthood are becoming more similar.

Implications and Discussion of Gender and Family

It has been argued that improvements in gender equality, especially in the strength of women’s economic positions, are responsible for the declining fertility level since the late 1970s. However, the societal context, which used to enhance the positive link between a traditional gender division of labour and fertility, has changed. Over the past 25 years, families that rely on a single earner’s income have experienced more economic uncertainties. At a time of severe job insecurity, dual-earner couples should have greater financial stability than single-earner or 1.5-earner couples. The obligation to stay at home to provide care is also reduced thanks to subsidised childcare provision. The weakened positive link between the traditional male-breadwinner model and fertility highlights the importance of the social context in which the relationship is situated.

The argument that gender-egalitarian roles within families are detrimental for fertility is no longer valid in Great Britain today. Notably, we are yet to observe that dual-earner families are more likely to have more children than the traditional male-breadwinner families. The reason could be due to the persisting incompatibility between childrearing and full-time employment, especially for women (Zhou 2017). Comparative studies have shown that the positive link between dual-earner couples and fertility is stronger in countries with more generous childcare provision (Greulich, Guergoat-Larivière and Thevenon 2018). Further improvements in gender equality and especially in resolving the conflict between work and family would ease the financial pressure on families and make it easier for people to realize their fertility intentions by encouraging the dual-earner model and providing financial security for childrearing.

Reference

British Social Attitudes. (2018). British Social Attitudes 35th Report: Gender. [electronic resource]. London: National Centre for Social Research.

Greulich, A., Guergoat-Larivière, M., and Thevenon, O. (2018). Facilitating family enlargement in Europe through dual parental employment. N-IUSSP, 28 May.

Luppi, F. (2016). What stops parents from having a second child? N-IUSSP, 24 Oct.

Zhou, M. (2017). Motherhood, Employment, and the Dynamics of Women’s Gender Attitudes. Gender & Society, 31(6), 751-776.

Zhou, M. and Kan, M.-Y. (2019). A new family equilibrium? Changing dynamics between the gender division of labour and fertility in Great Britain, 1991–2017. Demographic Research 40(50):1455-1500.

Footnotes

¹ Primary education usually starts at age 5 in England.

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