Degree of Contribution

Lead

Document Type

Article

Keywords

shift work, fathers, father involvement, child care

Disciplines

Family, Life Course, and Society | Work, Economy and Organizations

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of nonstandard employment schedules (shift work) on parenting among U.S. fathers of young children in dual-earner couples. The outcomes examined include total caregiving, caregiving without the mother present, and the elements of father involvement proposed by Pleck: positive engagement, warmth, and control. Models with latent variables and with lagged dependent variables are estimated using three waves of nationally-representative data from the Early Child Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). The results indicate that employment scheduling mainly shapes the context in which involvement takes place. Compared to dual-earner couples who are each employed during the day, fathers in couples in which at least one parent has a nonstandard schedule tend to care for their children more in the mother’s absence. To a more limited extent, they also do more caregiving overall. These effects are most conclusively found when the father works during the day and the mother works during the evening, when the mother works during the day but the father works a night, split, rotating, or other shift, and when both parents have nonstandard schedules. Parental work schedules, however, have little impact on father involvement aside from care.

Publication Title

Community, Work and Family

Volume

19

Issue

4

Article Number

1018

Publication Date

2016

First Page

396

Last Page

413

DOI of Published Version

10.1080/13668803.2015.1074544

Language

English

Peer Reviewed

1

Version

Post-publication

Content Type

Text

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