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Negotiating the Life Course pp 161–174Cite as

Fatherhood and Men’s Involvement in Paid Work in Australia

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Part of the book series: Life Course Research and Social Policies ((LCRS,volume 1))

Abstract

Becoming a parent is an important transition in the life course, yet most research does not consider how becoming a father changes men’s lives. This chapter focuses on whether life events affect involvement in paid work for Australian men. Of central interest is whether becoming a father changes the hours men spend in employment, but other events that are considered include having additional children, getting married, completing education, changing supervisor or manager status, and buying a home. Most research that considers differences between fathers and non-fathers is cross-sectional and typically finds that fathers spend longer hours in employment than men who are not fathers. However, previous research is limited due to the potential effects of unobservable characteristics that are associated with both employment hours and the likelihood of becoming a father. Using four waves of data from the Negotiating the Life Course project, changes in men’s employment hours prior to and after the transition to fatherhood are examined using methods which account for unobservable characteristics. The findings demonstrate that there is an effect of becoming a father that increases employment hours for men. This increase in hours could be explained by ‘time-allocation’ theories, or by the process of men ‘doing gender’. There are also potential effects on father’s level of involvement in parenting as a result of increased employment hours.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The wording of the questions over the various waves are:

    W1 Including all paid employment, how many hours did you work last week?

    W2 And how many hours did you actually work last week?

    W3&W4: Q1 Again referring only to your main job, how many hours did you actually work last week?  +  Q2 All together, how many hours did you actually work last week in these other jobs?

  2. 2.

    Employed men includes men who are self-employed.

  3. 3.

    English-speaking countries include Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, United States of America, Ireland and South Africa.

  4. 4.

    Before fitting these models a Heckman selection model was tested. A Heckman model is often used in wage models as it has been found that if wages are only modeled for the employed then there is potential selection bias: people who are not employed are potentially systematically different from those who are employed (and hence have wages). The Heckman model approach is a two stage equation where the first equation runs the selection model (e.g. employment), and the second equation estimates the principal equation (e.g. wages) given a correction for the selection. Here, we check that there is no selection bias in the measurement of hours employed and found the Heckman model to be significant. This indicates that the models of employment and hours should be run separately: i.e. understanding employment was not necessary to understand hours worked. Note that the coefficients estimated under the Heckman model were similar to those under the separate logit and regression models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Edith Gray

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  1. Edith Gray
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Correspondence to Edith Gray .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Demographic & Social, Research Institute, Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Aust Capital Terr, Australia

    Ann Evans

  2. School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, 4072, Queensland, Australia

    Janeen Baxter

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Gray, E. (2013). Fatherhood and Men’s Involvement in Paid Work in Australia. In: Evans, A., Baxter, J. (eds) Negotiating the Life Course. Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8912-0_9

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