Children and the revolution

Abstract

Women are increasingly allocating time to the paid workforce, but there has not been a corresponding change by men allocating equivalent time to domestic and caring labour. In the absence of sufficient institutional and domestic support, women continue to supply the bulk of time required to care for children. This amounts to only half a sex revolution and raises the question of whether becoming a parent creates welfare differences between mothers and fathers, and/or between mothers and non-mothers. This article addresses this issue by analysing data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Time Use Survey to investigate the impact of children on adults’ (paid and unpaid) workload. The results show that the time impact of becoming a parent is considerable, but very unevenly distributed by sex. Having children markedly intensifies gender inequities in time allocation by increasing specialization and women’s workload