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Dual‐earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID‐19

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  • Lyn Craig
  • Brendan Churchill

Abstract

COVID‐19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously. To investigate how they managed, this article draws a subsample of parents in dual‐earner couples (n = 1536) from a national survey of 2722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020. It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work–family balance and how their partner shared the load. Overall, paid work time was slightly lower and unpaid work time was very much higher during lockdown than before it. These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers. More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work–family balance and partner’s share before COVID‐19. For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse. Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before.

Suggested Citation

  • Lyn Craig & Brendan Churchill, 2021. "Dual‐earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID‐19," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S1), pages 66-79, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:s1:p:66-79
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12497
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    Cited by:

    1. Leah Ruppanner & Xiao Tan & Andrea Carson & Shaun Ratcliff, 2021. "Emotional and financial health during COVID‐19: The role of housework, employment and childcare in Australia and the United States," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 1937-1955, September.
    2. Maryna Tverdostup, 2023. "COVID-19 and Gender Gaps in Employment, Wages, and Work Hours: Lower Inequalities and Higher Motherhood Penalty," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(4), pages 713-735, December.
    3. Natalie Nitsche & Ansgar Hudde, 2022. "Countries embracing maternal employment opened schools sooner after Covid-19 lockdowns," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2022-008, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    4. Ting Wang, 2024. "Housework Reallocation between Genders and Generations during China’s COVID-19 Lockdowns: Patterns & Reasons," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-28, January.

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