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Parenthood and Domestic Work: A Never-Ending Workload

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Book cover Time Use in Domestic Settings Throughout the Life Course

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Sociology ((BRIEFSSOCY))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on parents of children up to 14 years old. According to previous literature, during this life stage gender inequalities in housework are the most acute. The findings show that virtually all mothers do at least 10 min of housework on the diary day, against approximatively 75% of fathers. The results for typically female tasks are even more extreme and reveal just how much Italian parents specialize in terms of home production, with women bearing most of the responsibility. The findings also show that mothers spend more time taking care of their children than fathers. An interesting result in this respect is that mothers are mostly responsible for the routine care and for helping children with homework, whereas fathers are more likely to undertake the most enjoyable part: playing with their children. Finally, the chapter engages with adult care, revealing that this activity is not very common in this age group and shows only minor gender differences in this respect.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The predicted values were calculated starting from a linear model where we regress housework time on gender, age of the youngest child and an interaction between the two variables.

  2. 2.

    For this and the following analyses we combined washing and cleaning in the same category since men’s time and participation in this area is limited.

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  1. European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy

    Giulia Maria Dotti Sani

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  1. Giulia Maria Dotti Sani
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Correspondence to Giulia Maria Dotti Sani .

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Dotti Sani, G.M. (2018). Parenthood and Domestic Work: A Never-Ending Workload. In: Time Use in Domestic Settings Throughout the Life Course. SpringerBriefs in Sociology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78720-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78720-6_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78719-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78720-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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