Parenting and fairness in diverse families

Abstract

In recent decades the family landscape has changed in most Western countries. There has been a clear rise in women’s labor force participation and postdivorce families have become more prevalent. Also, postdivorce families are diverse, and increasingly so: shared residence, father residence and LAT relationships have become more common. As a result of these developments, parents have likely adapted their parental roles and involvement. Using large-scale data from the survey New Families in the Netherlands (NFN), this dissertation considers a wide range of postdivorce and non-divorced families and examines to what extent parents are involved in childcare and whether they perceive the childcare division as fair. Results show that where the child lives (i.e., residence) is key to parental involvement. The more time parents reside with their children, the higher their involvement. Nuance is required, however, because divorced (shared) resident fathers are generally more involved with their children than non-divorced fathers. So the parent's relationship status with the other biological parent also influences the extent to which parents are involved in childcare. Having a new partner and stepchildren generally restrict parental involvement - yet it is most consequential for leisure and irregular care. This suggests that the time spent on these activities is easier to reduce because of their more discretionary nature. In contrast, the time dedicated to regular care is more protected as it consitutes an important part of children's daily care. Influence in child-related decision-making stands out as a distinct parenting behavior: repartnered parents report having more instead of less influence than single parents. Furthermore, fairness perceptions are not universal. First, unfairness perceptions are more common after divorce. In non-divorced families, the childcare division is generally perceived as fair by about four-fifths of parents, yet in postdivorce families, this amounts to only about half of parents. This difference in fairness perceptions suggests that the division of childrearing responsibilities is less taken for granted after divorce. Second, unfairness perceptions depend upon the type of investment and total workload. Generally, the division of childcare is more often perceived as fair than the division of housework or child-related costs. Also, the association between the actual division and unfairness perceptions is different for childcare and childrelated costs, at least in postdivorce families. Whereas divorced parents are at ease with increasingly low child expenses, probably because paying is usually not something desirable, this does not hold for increasingly low involvement in childcare. Divorced parents in such a situation actually desire to invest more time in children. Surprisingly, the association between the actual division and unfairness perceptions is not weaker for childcare than for housework. Apparently, when parents in non-divorced families are increasingly taking care of the children the focus is less on the enjoyable aspects of childcare, but, just as for housework, more on the investments of time and energy it requires. What matters more is the total workload. The more parents are involved in different types of labor, the stronger their contributions to childcare or housework are evaluated as unfair.