Int J Soc Welfare - 2023 - Marlo - Who S Minding The Children Gender Equity in The First 2 Years of The Pandemic

Received: 21 November 2022 Accepted: 17 May 2023
DOI: 10.1111/ijsw.12622
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Who's minding the children: Gender equity in the first

2 years of the pandemic
Joseph Marlo | Marc A. Scott | Sharon L. Weinberg
Department of Applied Statistics, Social

Science, and Humanities, New York Abstract
University, New York, NY, USA The wholesale changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic to men and
women's paid work arrangements and work–family balance provide a natural
Correspondence
Marc A. Scott, Department of Applied experiment for testing the common elements of two theories, needs exposure
Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities, (Schafer et al. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne De Sociologie,
New York University, 246 Greene St, New
57(4);2020:523–549) and parental proximity (Sullivan et al. Family Theory &
York, NY 10003, USA.
Email: marc.scott@nyu.edu Review, 2018;10(1):263–279) against a third theory also suggested by Schafer
et al. (2020), and labelled in this article, entrenchment/exacerbation of gender
inequality. Both needs exposure and parental proximity suggest that by being
home because of the pandemic, in proximity to their children, fathers are
exposed to new and enduring family needs, which may move them toward
more equal sharing in childcare and other domestic responsibilities. By con-
trast to studies that have tested such theories using retrospective, self-report
survey data over a 2-year period, we analyse more than a decade of time-use
diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) that covers the first
2 years of the pandemic. We model the secular and quarterly trends to predict
what would have occurred in the absence of the pandemic, contrasting this to
what indeed happened. Our analyses consider aggregate and individual
impacts, using methods of sequence analysis, clustering, and matching.
Among our results, we find that the division of childcare responsibilities did
not become more equitable during the pandemic. Suggestions for future
research are provided as are suggestions for the implementation of social poli-
cies that could influence greater gender equity in unpaid work and childcare.
KEYWORDS
childcare, clustering, COVID-19, gender gap, interrupted time-series, Mahalanobis
matching, sequence analysis, time-use
INTRODUCTION Hansez, 2021; Cohen & Huffman, 2007; Cotter et al., 2001;
Hultin, 2003). They also have been recognized in the home
Gender inequities in the workplace have long been recog- where women, relative to men, have been known to take
nized and researched, from salary pay scale differentials on disproportionate responsibilities for childcare and other
(Blau & Kahn, 2017; Cohen & Huffman, 2007; domestic chores even while holding full-time paid employ-
Oaxaca, 1973; Weichselbaumer & Winter-Ebmer, 2005) to ment (Bianchi et al., 2000; Bianchi et al., 2012;
glass ceiling effects on high-level advancement (Babic & Fuwa, 2004; Greenstein, 2009; Pew Research Center, 2015;
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2 MARLO ET AL.
Treas, 2013; Yavorsky et al., 2015). With women's entry experienced an approximate increase of 1 h and 20 min
into paid employment outside the home, a new set of over 2019—and thus, the extant gap increased. Of those
norms has emerged for fathers that define them as having two additional hours, 48 min coincided with work indicat-
a greater involvement with their children in addition to ing that women were juggling work responsibilities with
being a financial provider (Gerson, 2010; McGill, 2014; household responsibilities. It should be noted that time-
Taylor et al., 2013; Townsend, 2002). According to McGill use diaries for measuring time spent in various activities
(2014) ‘[t]hese “new fathers” are expected to be more throughout the day are ‘considered the gold standard for
equal partners in parenting (and other household work), accuracy and detail’ as they are known to produce less
spending time nurturing children and performing both biased responses than other methods (e.g., self-reports
interactive and physical caregiving activities’ (p. 1090). from surveys) in the domain of time-use measurement
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutting of schools (Wray, 2020; Yavorsky et al., 2015).
and daycare centers along with a shift to a remote work Given the greater time lag involved in academic pub-
environment, there has been an increase in research and lishing and the greater effort required to complete a
reporting on the extent to which these changes have large-scale scholarly study, to date, few such studies have
impacted the balance of household, and in particular, been published on this topic in journal outlets. As dis-
childcare responsibilities for men and women. Herein, we cussed below, while articles in the media (e.g., The New
examine both primary and secondary childcare activities, York Times, and other such media outlets) have provided
defined respectively as caring for a child exclusively or summaries of extant data, a focus of the large-scale schol-
multi-tasking another activity, apart from sleep, such as arly articles has been on using data, typically collected by
paid or unpaid work.1 the authors, to empirically test competing theories related
Reports in the media provide ample testimony on the to the impact of COVID-19 on the unequal division of
pandemic's effect on job loss as well as on balancing work household labour by men and women. According to
and family for men and women (e.g., Cohen & Schafer et al. (2020), ‘the combination of increased
Hsu, 2020; Donner, 2020; Kenny & Yang, 2021; domestic work and the possibility that fathers' paid work
Koh, 2021; Lewis, 2020). With respect to the issue of is prioritized in a period of financial crisis’ (p. 524), may
domestic labour, with both men and women at home lead to an entrenchment/exacerbation of gender inequality,
during the pandemic, a report by Kenny and Yang (2021) however, it may also lead to greater gender equality
estimated that the gender gap in childcare responsibilities through what Schafer et al. (2020) called needs exposure
would be reduced by half during the pandemic as com- (p. 525). In particular, that by being present in the home,
pared with beforehand and would lead to greater equality in proximity to their children during the pandemic,
in childcare time allocation between men and women. ‘some fathers were exposed to new and enduring family
Even were this estimated reduction to occur, using pre- needs which may move them toward more equal sharing
pandemic global OECD time-use data, these same in housework and childcare’ (p. 524).
authors further estimated that during the first 6 months To test these competing theories, Schafer et al. (2020)
of the pandemic, women would still have ‘a fifty-plus collected and analysed retrospective self-reports of per-
hour additional childcare workload per capita’ over men ceived sharing of household and childcare responsibili-
(this is a half-year cumulated difference). In other words, ties. They compared data on housework and childcare
both genders would do more childcare, but the gap would from before and during the early part of the pandemic in
begin to close. Canada. Consistent with the report by Kenny and Yang
Drawing from time-use diary data obtained during the (2021), Schafer et al. (2020) found that mothers perceived
pandemic from the U.S.-administered American Time Use a small shift to a more equally shared responsibility for
Survey (ATUS; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022), Cassel- housework and childcare and that fathers perceived
man and Koeze (2021), in their report for The New York themselves to have a greater involvement in these activi-
Times, were able to estimate the extent to which men and ties during the pandemic than they did before it. As a
women shouldered childcare responsibilities during the caveat to this finding, Schafer et al. (2020) noted that the
pandemic in the United States. They also compared that perceptions of task sharing produced by these retrospec-
estimate to relevant pre-pandemic levels. They found that, tive self-reports may have been biased, on the one hand,
in the aggregate, women not only spent two additional by mothers not knowing to what extent fathers actually
hours per day on childcare in 2020 versus 2019, but they were involved, and on the other, by fathers overestimat-
spent two and half more hours than men—who ing their involvement to ‘make themselves look like
“good” dads’ (p. 528).
1
More detailed definitions of primary and secondary childcare are In another such study, Carlson et al. (2021) used data
provided later in the article. collected during the early days of the pandemic, in late
WHO'S MINDING THE CHILDREN? 3
April 2020, to examine whether by ‘removing workplace The survey, which was conducted from May 7, 2020 to
barriers (e.g., lack of paid leave, inability to telecommute) May 20, 2020, asked respondents to recall their childcare
often cited as impediments to U.S. fathers' domestic time allocations in relation to both before and during the
involvement’ (p. 1218) fathers may become more pandemic. Craig and Churchill (2020) found that ‘[a]bso-
engaged at home, reducing the known gender gap in lute increases in unpaid labour were higher for mothers
housework and childcare. The authors found that ‘41% of than for fathers, but compared with their average input
fathers and 35% of mothers were working from home prior to the pandemic, the proportional differences were
exclusively during the pandemic compared with before higher for fathers’ (p. 75). Basing their interpretation of
the pandemic where only 9% of fathers and 12% of results on these differences in proportions of time spent
mothers worked from home exclusively’ (p. 19). Despite on childcare, the authors concluded that ‘during COVID-
this reversal in the percentages of fathers and mothers 19, Australian fathers significantly narrowed the gender
working from home, the authors found ‘an overall gaps in both active and in supervisory care of children’
increase in domestic responsibilities for mothers who (p. 75). This conclusion is like that of some of the other
already were doing most of the household labour’ (p. 1) scholarly studies described previously in this article. In
and found that driven by increases in contributions by contrast to the other scholarly studies cited, Craig and
fathers, ‘both mothers and fathers report a general shift Churchill (2020) directly examined the relative shift in
toward more egalitarian divisions of household labour’ the employment status of women and men due to the
(p. 1). The study was based on the responses of 1025 pandemic, and importantly, found no gender differences
U.S. parents to an online survey based on non-probability over the period studied. Specifically, they found that ‘[f]
sampling that asked male and female partners to report, athers' and mothers' reports of their partners' employ-
among other things ‘on how their time, and their part- ment status before and during COVID-19 largely mir-
ner's time, in domestic tasks changed since the start of rored their own changes in employment status over the
the pandemic [using a 5-point scale]’ with respect to a period’ (p. 69). As in the other cases cited, the survey
number of specific tasks (i.e., looking after the child, method used in this case is vulnerable to limitations of
reading, playing, organizing). The authors acknowledged recall and social desirability.
the limitations of using data based on perceived estimates Finally, in a fourth study, Yerkes et al. (2020) used
of their own and their partners' time spent on domestic retrospective data from a representative sample of Dutch
activities and found ‘discrepancies in parents' reports’ parents in April 2020 to examine whether the ‘COVID-19
(p. 1238) regarding who was doing more domestic work. pandemic and far-reaching measures taken by govern-
It is interesting that ‘[f]athers were more likely to report ments to reduce the spread of the virus have the potential
that they were doing more than to report their partners to substantially impact patterns of gender inequality,
were doing more’ (p. 1232), whereas mothers were more especially within families with children’ (p. 23). The
equitable in their allocations of time spent. Such uneven- authors created two variables to obtain whether (simple
ness in reporting in this case may reflect a social desir- yes/no) the relative share of childcare and household
ability bias in participants' responses, especially among work of each of 868 respondents from 643 households
fathers, and raise questions about the accuracy of their increased from before to during the pandemic lockdown.
data. In addition, the authors noted that because the Based on these and other variables, the authors found
scale of measurement used was based on rating ‘stylized ‘limited evidence of a reduction in gender inequality in
questions’ (p. 1238) in terms of only five qualitative cate- the division of childcare and household work’ (p. 16).
gories, actual estimates of time spent in domestic tasks They found that ‘[w]hile mothers continue to do more
were not possible. household and caregiving tasks than fathers, the gap
In a third such scholarly study, Craig and Churchill decreased somewhat as fathers report doing (somewhat)
(2020) surveyed dual-earner couples with children under more during the lockdown than before’ (p. 16). Limita-
the age of 17 from a national survey in Australia, tions of this study, as cited by the authors, include that
n = 1536, to determine ‘what happens when the spatial not only are the self-rated before-after comparisons sub-
organization of paid work and unpaid domestic work and ject to issues of recall and social desirability, but also they
care is not so different for mothers and fathers’ (p. 67) as are not longitudinal and only ‘allow for a snapshot of a
a result of COVID-19. Relevant to our own study, the unique situation’ (p. 19).
authors were interested in determining how many hours While focused on the influence of the COVID-19 pan-
per day each spent in childcare activities that included demic on the domestic division of household labour,
both ‘active care’, requiring hands-on involvement and these media reports and scholarly studies are part of a
‘supervisory care’, requiring being responsible for chil- long history, beginning at least as early as 1963 with the
dren, but not engaged in direct interaction with them. publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan,
4 MARLO ET AL.
on the social movement toward gender equality in the study allows us to test these theories by modelling the sec-
home. Freidan's book, which gained great popularity, ular and quarterly trends to predict what would have
challenged the ‘feminine mystique’ that ‘[f]ulfillment as occurred in the absence of the pandemic and contrast that
a woman had only one definition for American women to what indeed happened 2 years from its onset. In addi-
after 1949—the housewife-mother’ (Friedan, 1963, p. 36). tion, we pose and answer more nuanced questions reflect-
It sparked a second wave of feminism in the ing potential changes in individual behaviours, including
United States in the 1960s and 1970s that elicited ‘new time of day features in work and childcare activities.
conditions for the development of gender consciousness’ Because time use can be understood as a sequence of
(Sullivan et al., 2018, p. 266) that were more acutely activities whose patterns may have changed, we make
focused than earlier movements on the unequal gender use of sequence analysis (see Abbott, 1995) to consider
distribution of household labour ‘in the face of women's whether the daily routine has been altered by the pan-
entry into paid employment’ (Sullivan et al., 2018, demic. While the literature on sequence analysis applied
p. 264). Among these conditions, Sullivan et al. (2018) to gender differences in childcare is somewhat limited,
cites research that identifies both individual gender ideol- related work provides some guidance on the methodol-
ogies and social policies as being influential. Significant ogy employed. Vagni and Cornwell (2018) document
to our study, Sullivan et al.'s (2018) study mentions eight distinct patterns in daily time use using sequence
parental leave as a social policy for providing ‘opportuni- analysis, establishing a framework for comparative stud-
ties for the continuation of the gender revolution in ies. Vagni (2019) discussed gendered time use with
unpaid work and care’ (p. 265) on the theory that parents respect to household labour, and measurement discor-
who are in proximity to their children in the home take dance. Gerontologists have explored time use as a predic-
on greater responsibility for the care of their children. tor of later health (Lam & Garcia, 2021).
This theory aligns well with the theory of needs exposure
and the questions addressed by the other scholarly stud-
ies referenced in this article. TH E CU R R E N T S T U D Y
The wholesale changes brought about by the
COVID-19 pandemic to men and women's paid work We test the common elements of the theories of parental
arrangements and work-family supports provide a natural proximity and needs exposure against the theory of
experiment for exploring individuals' time-use in the home entrenchment/exacerbation of gender inequality by
and testing whether the proximity of both parents to their assessing whether changes in daily living due to the pan-
children in the home promotes a more equal distribution demic have in fact promoted gender equality in both pri-
of shared childcare. Like parental leave, the pandemic sit- mary and secondary childcare responsibilities in the
uates many parents at home in proximity to their children. home. Distinguishing between primary and secondary
As such, it provides a unique opportunity to test the com- childcare is a key feature of our study.
mon elements of two theories, respectively suggested by Primary childcare, defined as a sole or predominant
Schafer et al. (2020) (needs exposure), and Sullivan et al. childcare activity, is an important indicator of time spent
(2018) (as labelled in this article, parental proximity) on childcare, but it is incomplete as childcare may be one
against a third theory (entrenchment/exacerbation of gen- of several activities occurring simultaneously. This is espe-
der inequality) also suggested by Schafer et al. (2020). cially the case in 2020 when many individuals' lives were
Needs exposure and parental proximity both suggest that upended. Workers, who were able, stayed home and per-
through parental proximity to their children in the home formed their jobs remotely. Young students made similar
fathers are exposed to the needs of their children, engen- adjustments. Many childcare centers were closed: two-
dering movement toward a more equal gender distribution thirds temporarily closed in April 2020 with one-third
of household labour, and childcare responsibilities. remaining closed a year later (see Lee & Parolin, 2021).
To test the common elements of the theories of needs Parents found themselves spending much more time dur-
exposure and parental proximity against the theory of ing the week simultaneously managing their day-to-day
entrenchment/exacerbation of gender inequality, the cur- job and other responsibilities along with childcare, making
rent study analyses time-use diary data from the ATUS, it important to include secondary childcare as an indicator
capitalizing on its reliability and accuracy. As a departure of time spent in childcare over and above primary child-
from the media report by Casselman and Koeze (2021), care. From an operational perspective, primary childcare
which also used the ATUS, our study does not limit its is defined as the total number of minutes spent providing
analyses to only 2 years of data, one from before the pan- childcare as the primary activity—that is, the activity the
demic and the other from during the pandemic, but, respondent listed for a given time period; accordingly, sec-
instead, uses more than 10 years of data. As such, our ondary childcare is defined as the total number of minutes
spent providing childcare to at least one child during continuously running cross-sectional survey of time use
another activity—for example, looking after children while in the United States. It includes 228,000 interviews con-
also cooking dinner, watching television, or paying bills. ducted from 2003 to 2021 covering activities from sleep to
The adult must be responsible for care but it is not work to childcare. It is sponsored by the Bureau of Labor
required that they are actively engaged. Another adult Statistics and conducted by the Census Bureau. Although
may be present and contributing to care but this is not the ATUS reports minutes spent by individuals in each of
explicitly recorded. a large variety of daily activities, in this study we focus on
the activities of work and childcare.
The survey covers all individuals living in
Research questions United States households who are at least 15 years of age,
excluding active military and institutionalized persons.
To provide a context for evaluating changes in childcare The ATUS sample is drawn from the Current Population
due to the pandemic, research question 1 (RQ1) exam- Survey (CPS). Households become eligible for the ATUS
ines the historical trends in primary and secondary after completing 8 months of CPS surveys. The sample
childcare. Research question 2 (RQ2) directly tests pre- size is 12,000 households annually after accounting for
dictions of the related theories of needs exposure and nonresponse. The survey is administered via telephone to
parental proximity with respect to both primary and a randomly selected person aged 15 or older within each
secondary childcare. Research questions 3 (RQ3) and sampled household. The selected respondents report their
4 (RQ4) provide more nuanced analyses of our data. activities, timing, and duration for the previous day in a
RQ3 examines individual-level changes in time spent in 24-h diary recorded from 4 am to 4 am. Simultaneous
childcare and RQ4 examines variation in patterns of activities are not recorded (only the primary activity)
time spent doing childcare at the individual and socie- except for secondary childcare which is separately
tal level. recorded. The repeated cross-sectional surveys over
10 years provide robust information on trends in these
• RQ1: Is there an increase in the childcare hours of pri- activities until 2019, with an external shock beginning
mary and secondary childcare during the pandemic in 2020 that allows us to assess what would have happened,
2020 versus the same period in 2019 before the pan- a counterfactual, in the absence of the pandemic, via the
demic taking into consideration the historical trend prior trend.
based on prior years, and to what extent does this It should be noted that, not surprisingly, the COVID-
remain in 2021 after limited returns to the office and 19 pandemic caused the closure of Census Bureau data
other workplace venues? collection operations in 2020, ceasing the collection of
• RQ2: Does the mean increase in childcare hours for data between March 18, 2020 and May 9, 2020. As a
women and men stay the same or does it increase result, full-year time use estimates were not available for
more for men than women, reducing the gender gap in 2020. Although our analyses are primarily based on
time spent in primary and secondary childcare in ATUS time use estimates that have been aggregated on a
2020? Do changes remain in 2021? quarterly basis, those that are based on estimates aggre-
• RQ3: What is the distribution of individual-level dif- gated annually only include data collected in May–
ferences in time spent on childcare from 2019 to December of their respective year.
2020, the first year of the pandemic? To what extent There are over 400 distinct time use activities recorded
are these distributions different for men and women, within the ATUS, which we aggregate into 16 categories
and to what extent do they revert to 2019 levels for the sequence analysis: Sleep; Personal Care; Household
by 2021? Activities; Caring for Household Child; Caring for House-
• RQ4: Beyond an average difference, does the pattern in hold Adult; Caring for Non-household Member; Work;
childcare and other activities change from 2019 to Education; Consumer Purchases; Professional and Per-
2020, the first year of the pandemic? Do multiple pat- sonal Care Services; Eating and Drinking; Socializing,
terns emerge? If so, is one pattern more prevalent than Relaxing, and Leisure; Sports, Exercise, and Recreation;
others? Do patterns persist into 2021? Religious and Spiritual; Volunteering; and Other.
DATA Operational definition of childcare
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS; Bureau of Labor Childcare is based on those original 400 activity codes
Statistics, 2022) is a nationally representative and is defined as non-paid care for household children
6 MARLO ET AL.
under age 13 that is performed during the waking hours of the pandemic (2020) is compared against the previous
of the respondent and the child. Children may or may year, restricted to respondents who were surveyed in May
not be direct descendants of the respondent; they just or later, to ensure comparability given the break in ATUS
need to be part of the household unit. Time-related to data collection. Because matching relies on demo-
such activities as packing lunch for the school day while graphics, respondents with missing information on edu-
the child is asleep and paid daycare-related activities are cation, geographic location, and metropolitan versus
not included in our analyses. However, time on such rural status also are excluded—resulting in 614 matched
activities as physical care, reading, playing, sports, talk- pairs across 2019 and 2020, with an 5% loss in respon-
ing, and travel time related to childcare activities are dents due to missing information.3 To answer RQ4,
included. As noted earlier, we distinguish these activities because we wished to examine demographics for each
as either primary or secondary childcare. Primary and cluster, we applied the same restrictions as were used for
secondary childcare are thus precisely defined in our RQ3, apart from having children in the household. For
analyses. the analysis of RQ4, respondents were included whether
there were children in the household or not, resulting in
2779, 3136, and 2683 respondents, respectively in years
Operational definition of sequences 2019, 2020, and 2021.
The survey records ‘sex’ based on participants'
Sequences (used in RQ4) are defined by the modal activ- response to ‘What is your sex?’. Because only three
ity occurring every 30 min starting at 4 am. Pre- responses are allowed, ‘Male’, ‘Female’, or ‘Don't know,
processing the data in this manner has some necessary refused’, our analyses could only include respondents if
computational advantages but may remove some activi- they chose Male or Female rather than a more nuanced
ties with short durations. The mean length of time per measure of gender.
activity is 53 min, excluding sleep, so we do not expect
this coarsening to have significant impact. Each activity
is further split to distinguish between activities including METHODS
or excluding secondary childcare. If the respondent is
providing at least 1 min of secondary childcare during To answer RQ1 and RQ2, we establish the counterfac-
the 30-min period, then the activity is further designated tual via an interrupted time-series analysis of primary
as secondary childcare. The 16 activities combined with and secondary childcare (PCC and SCC, respectively)
binary indicators for secondary childcare result in based on over a decade of data. This analysis allows us
31 unique states (sleeping cannot be combined with to show changes, after the onset of the pandemic, in
childcare). total time spent in childcare in the years 2020 and 2021
The full ATUS dataset consists of 228,455 respondents among men and women, on average, without consider-
over the 19-year period from 2003 to 2021; our analysis ation of any underlying shifts in demographics or time-
begins in the first quarter of 2005. For each of our ana- of-day habits.
lyses, we restrict the data to best match our research To answer RQ3, we construct matched paired obser-
question of interest. To answer research questions 1–3 vations between pre-COVID (2019) and during COVID
(RQ1–3), which evaluate differences in time spent in (2020) using Mahalanobis' matching so that matches are
childcare activities, the data are restricted to households purged as much as possible of demographic differences.
that contain children that are under the age of 13.2 For This allows us to estimate the change in total time spent
research questions 1 and 2 (RQ1–2), which compare on primary and secondary childcare likely to be at the
mean time spent in childcare activities, for comparability individual level between 2019 and 2020. Similarly
across years, data from the first and second quarters of matched pairs between 2020 and 2021 are evaluated.
2020 are removed due to the aforementioned break in Finally, for RQ4, we perform cluster analysis of the time-
ATUS data collection. For (RQ1–2), the resulting sample use sequences to understand the timing and co-
size is approximately 64,000 after including households occurrence of primary childcare and secondary childcare
that have at least one child less than age 13. For RQ3, with other activities such as work and to reveal any
which is conducted at the individual level, the first year emerging patterns. Details of each analysis are described
in the following subsections.
2
This differs from Casselman and Koeze (2021), who do not include
children <6 years old. Our choice reflects the potential additional
3
burdens to parents due to the closing of childcare centers and Pre-K The sample reduces to 441 when restricted to couples. Matched pairs
during the pandemic. between other years had comparable sample sizes.
Interrupted time series Estimating daily time spent on childcare
While time series document the course of a particular We estimate the mean daily time spent on primary and
measure over time, such as world population or a stock secondary childcare from 2005 to 2021 on a quarterly
market index, an interrupted time series, in its most basic basis to allow for seasonal differences. We estimate the
form, is the analysis of a time series after an exogenous change in mean daily time spent on primary and second-
‘shock’. The period before the shock forms the basis for ary childcare before during and after 2020 as a series of
the counterfactual, ‘what would have occurred’ and the interrupted time series (ITS) models that include a time
period following the shock documents what actually does trend, quarter indicators, and an indicator for the
occur. While this design is subject to the usual threats to COVID-19 period. Given the potential for the effects of
validity, it is often robust to them, particularly when the COVID-19 policies to change and thus wane over time
shock is far reaching, so that the entire population is (policies, preventative measures, and treatment change),
affected. we include separate pandemic indicators for 2020 and
When time series for two or more groups are exam- 2021. Recall that data from the first and second quarters
ined over time, they can be used to understand a ‘gap’ of 2020 are not available due to a cessation of data collec-
between them, such as a gender gap in wages or a racial tion during those quarters.4
gap in educational attainment. When, in addition, there The ITS models are fit using a generalized least squares
is an exogenous shock to the system during the timespan approach that allows for time-correlated errors (auto-
studied, a more robust evaluation of change may be regressive of order one). The exact components of the
obtained. This study uses an interrupted time series to model are selected from a set of increasingly complex
examine the impact of the exogenous shock of COVID-19 model specifications (main effects and interactions) via
on the gender gap in time spent on childcare. Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC; Schwarz, 1978), first
The onset of the pandemic was quick, unexpected, pooling across the sexes, and then allowing for sex-specific
and unplanned for—conditions that describe an ideal interactions. BIC is a penalized likelihood approach to
natural experiment (Shadish et al., 2002). If we can model model selection that prefers parsimonious models and can
the trajectory for time spent doing childcare before the be used with a non-nested class of models.
shock, we can then make a projection into subsequent
years that reflects the counterfactual, ‘what would have
happened had the shock not occurred’. An observed shift Matching to identify within-person change
in the outcome—typically a level shift, but sometimes a in time spent in activities
slope change as well—immediately following the shock
may be taken as the effect of the shock on the population, Average differences between males and females provide an
subject to the usual threats to validity. important understanding of social processes, but they are
When additional observations are collected after the limited in that they are in the aggregate, and as such, do
intervention, it is possible to assess both the shift in level not provide individual experiences of change, nor variation
and any change in slope, depending on the number of in the time spent on activities. For example, an average
post-intervention time points observed. Kontopantelis increase in childcare activities of 2 h/day for women would
et al. (2015) describe the primary assumptions of an inter- be equivalent to eight additional hours for one woman out
rupted time series design (ITS), and Shadish et al. (2002) of four, or identical 2-h burdens for all women. We require
provide detailed examples across many variations. The a more nuanced comparison. Given the cross-sectional
primary assumption is that the functional form nature of the ATUS study design, we use a statistical
(e.g., linearity) of the pre-intervention trend is plausible matching technique to construct synthetic longitudinal
and that it would have continued over time. In the case cohorts of individuals spanning the pre- and post-COVID
of our analysis, our primary assumption is that the gen- period. Matching is performed from 2020 to 2019 many-
der gap in childcare and household activities would con- to-one (i.e., the same 2019 record may be matched to more
tinue over time in the context of historically consistent than one 2020 record), as the 2020 respondents are our
seasonal effects. We use weights supplied by ATUS when population of interest (akin to assessing a treatment effect
possible. on the treated, e.g., ATT). We use Mahalanobis distance to
Because we have ATUS data through 2021, one and a
half years into the pandemic, we are able to study the 4
This decision enforces consistency across years as we establish
extent to which time spent in childcare ‘reverts’ quarterly effects in our models. This small departure from the analysis
(Bonanno et al., 2011) to pre-intervention levels, or how, in Casselman and Koeze (2021), who use 6 weeks from late May and
more generally, the trend itself changes. June, may account for some of the differences in our findings.
8 MARLO ET AL.
determine the matches and calculate the distance based on Of particular relevance is the work of Vagni and Corn-
family income (top-coded at $150,000), presence of partner, well (2018). They analysed diaries from the Multinational
education (Did not graduate HS, HS, Some college, Bache- Time Use Study to show that contrary to conventional belief,
lors, Masters, Doctoral/Professional), number of children, individual lives can be grouped into eight typical behaviour
age of youngest,5 region of U.S., partner working status, types. These are primarily working (five types, depending on
elder in household status, and metropolitan status the start of the shift), unpaid work (two types, depending on
(cf. King & Nielsen, 2019). Matches are first blocked on the amount), and leisure. These three broad categories corre-
sex, race, quarter, and age ±2 years to ensure perfect spond roughly to the categories we will uncover from our
matches for these privileged variables. The R package Stat- ATUS data. Once such types are established, two important
Match (D'Orazio, 2015) and the function mahalanobis.dist questions emerge: who is in each cluster (demographics)
were used to carry out the matching. We restrict the sam- and does this population change with different cohorts? The
ple to include only households that have children under latter question is quite nuanced and is pertinent to a study
13 and who took the survey in the third or fourth quarter of gender differences that may have been changing before
of 2019 or 2020. We repeat this procedure for the 2020– the pandemic, but perhaps underwent more drastic changes
2021 analysis of ‘reversion’. immediately following its onset.
Match quality is expected to be strong due to the com- In this study, we use sequence analysis to identify pat-
prehensive sampling methodology employed in the Ameri- terns in the timing and sequencing of childcare and work
can Time Use Survey. In other words, the same ‘types’ of activities during the work week, pre- and post-COVID, to
people are surveyed each year. Moreover, we find that go beyond mean and variation changes to time-of-day dif-
empirically, the Mahalanobis distance is conditionally ferences. Analogous to the work of Vagni and Cornwell
independent of differences in PCC or SCC within the pairs (2018), we form basic typologies of daily activities and
(i.e., larger differences in our outcome of interest are not investigate whether there was a qualitative change in
associated with poorer match quality). We also performed these typologies from 2019 to 2020, and to what extent
a sensitivity analysis (to be described after we discuss the any change remained in 2021. Specifically, we address
findings) to evaluate whether the findings in 2019–2020 are whether the workday occupies an expanded set of bound-
an artefact of something inherent in the matching process. aries beyond the traditional hours of 9 to 5, or rather does
it now incorporate a broader range of activities within
the hours of 9 to 5 that prominently includes childcare?
Social sequence analysis Central to most clustering techniques is the measure of
distance between the profiles of different subjects. With
While the focus of this analysis is on childcare, it is nominal outcomes, this question becomes inherently more
important to document to what extent the composition of challenging, but substantial work has been done to guide
daily activities (e.g., work, leisure, childcare) changed researchers toward a methodology guided by their
from before to during the pandemic, because childcare is research questions. The choice of distance and its implica-
not an isolated activity but occurs along with other activi- tions for the analysis are discussed in Studer and Ritschard
ties. We use sequence analysis to do so (Abbott, 1990; (2015). Common to most distance measures used is an
Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2010; Ritschard & Studer, 2018). In algorithmic technique that allows for minor perturbations
sequence analysis, unsupervised machine learning tech- within a sequence in a manner similar to the error term in
niques identify patterns in the nominal sequence data a linear regression model. The rules surrounding sequence
and then group or cluster these to build a typology for comparisons form the basis of optimal matching methods
the population. Blanchard et al. (2014) and Cornwell in sequence analysis (Abbott, 1995; Abbott & Tsay, 2000;
(2015) synthesized the ideas, methods and new Aisenbrey & Fasang, 2010; Kruskal, 1983). We primarily
approaches commonly used to analyse sequence data, use a form of edit distance known as longest common sub-
and the field is now often referred to as social sequence sequence to compare subject time use profiles.
analysis. Sociologists have used social sequence analysis
to identify normative pathways across time, and the
implication of them on later outcomes (Rossignon RESULTS
et al., 2018).
An historical context (RQ1): Primary
5 childcare
The targeted causal estimand is the treatment effect on the treated, so
the true counterfactual would be someone in 2020 who did not
experience the pandemic. That person would have the same aged According to Figure 1, the historical trend for primary
children, rather than a child who was a year younger. childcare pooling males and females is remarkably
F I G U R E 1 Mean daily time spent on primary childcare (left) and secondary childcare (right) for household children, n = 64,233. Only
includes households with at least one child under the age of 13. The dark line represents the predicted regression line including quarterly
effects. Note the x-axis ticks refer to the end of the quarter of the preceding year.
constant from 2005 to 2019, with the mean daily time than that of PCC, and the pandemic effect appears larger.
spent on primary childcare of 1 h and 18 min for house- Applying the same modelling approach to the time series
holds with children under age 13. To establish this ana- of secondary childcare (SCC), we find a secular trend of
lytically, we fit a baseline model that pools effects across decreased SCC at the rate of 1/3 min per quarter in the
sex, controlling for quarter and COVID-19. From this years 2005–2019, followed by a clear tick up of nearly
model (not shown), we identify a small but significant 38 min during the first year of the pandemic (model-
increasing trend of a bit less than a tenth of a minute per based estimates). Moreover, SCC did not revert to pre-
quarter, and some clear seasonality, with less childcare in pandemic levels, and in 2021, it was still estimated to be
Q2 and Q3 (these include summer months). The COVID- 30 min more than what would have occurred otherwise,
19 quarters Q3 and Q4 in 2020 show a significant but given the secular and seasonal trends.
small increase of 6½ min in daily childcare, followed by a
reversion to pre-pandemic levels of primary childcare in
2021.6 This analysis serves to document the broader trend Testing needs exposure and parental
and shock. Note that the dark line represents the pre- proximity against entrenchment/
dicted regression line from our model that includes quar- exacerbation of gender inequality (RQ2):
terly effects, and thus yields a jagged shape. Primary childcare
Disaggregated by sex, Figure 2 shows that the primary

An historical context (RQ1): Secondary childcare burden is unequally distributed across women
childcare and men. Women, on average, spend 1 h, 40 min daily
on primary childcare while men spend about half that
Again referring to Figure 1, we first remark that the aver- amount of time. The figure suggests that the pandemic ini-
age amount of secondary childcare (SCC) is much larger tially had a larger effect on women than men. We estimate
these differences using a statistical model. There is also
6
The first-order autoregressive errors, capturing any remaining seasonal
some indication that men lagged women in their response
variation, were only preferred by BIC in the SCC model allowing for to the pandemic. Note that the dark line represents the
sex-specific effects. predicted regression line including quarterly effects.
10 MARLO ET AL.
F I G U R E 2 Mean daily time spent on primary childcare for household children, n = 64,233. Only includes households with at least one
child under the age of 13. The dark line represents the predicted regression line including quarterly effects. Note the x-axis ticks refer to the
end of the quarter of the preceding year.
T A B L E 1 Regression results for average daily minutes of indicate that females spent almost 18 more minutes, on
primary childcare by sex. average, per day on primary childcare as compared with
Full-sample Couples-only what they were predicted to report based on the trend and
Coefficient (n = 64,233) (n = 46,936) seasonality in the prior 15 years, and there was no signifi-
Time (in 0.07* 0.1**
cant sex-based difference by 2021, indicating a reversion
quarters) (see coefficients labelled COVID effect). For males, the
COVID 2020 interaction ‘cancels’ the main effect, and it
COVID effect in 17.6*** 15.8**
2020 is non-significant in 2021 (coefficients: Male * COVID).
We conclude that men's participation in primary child-
COVID effect in 0.6 5.4
2021 care was essentially unaffected by COVID-19, on average,
while the opposite was true for women.
Second quarter 2.8 4.1*
To test more precisely the theories of parental proxim-
Third quarter 6.5*** 8.6***
ity and needs exposure against the theory of entrench-
Fourth quarter 2.3 3.2 ment/exacerbation of gender inequality, we re-estimate
Male 47.9*** 57.8*** this model, restricting the sample to individuals who indi-
Male * COVID 22.4*** 19.2** cate having a partner. We do not know the partner's sex, so
effect 2020 we must assume that our estimates are a lower bound on
Male * COVID 2.6 0.5 the potential reduction in gender differences. The results
effect 2021 are given in the second column of Table 1. For PCC, the
Note: The coefficient values are unstandardized.
results are essentially the same; women are estimated to do
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. 16 min of additional childcare in the first year of the pan-
demic and men do not share this burden, on average.
We report in Table 1 the estimates from the best
model, which allows for a male–female differential in
childcare as well as different effects in the COVID-19 Testing needs exposure and parental
period. This model was best in terms of BIC and provides proximity against entrenchment/
us with a more nuanced understanding of the impact of exacerbation of gender inequality (RQ2):
COVID-19 by sex. First, there is an overall increasing Secondary childcare
trend of 1/14 min per quarter, and males on average
report 48 min less time spent on childcare. This holds To document the differences in childcare by sex with
from 2005 to 2019. Notably, in 2020, the model estimates respect to secondary childcare, we selected an ITS model
T A B L E 2 Regression results for average daily minutes of much more nuanced; women are estimated to do an hour
secondary childcare by sex. of additional childcare in the first year of the pandemic
Full-sample Couples-only
while men do an additional half-hour, on average. In the
Coefficient (n = 64,233) (n = 46,936) second year of the pandemic, both are doing a little over
one half-hour more than they were in 2019. SCC has not
Time (in 0.3** 0.3*
quarters) completely reverted, on average and examined by sex.
COVID effect in 37.8** 64.2***
2020
Distribution of changes in time spent on
COVID effect in 30.5** 43.5***
2021
childcare at the individual-level (RQ3)
Second quarter 10.4** 9.3*
While the average trends are compelling, we seek to
Third quarter 25.3*** 22.5*** understand changes in individuals' lives, as described in
Fourth quarter 5.7 4.3 research question 3. We are limited by our pooled cross-
Male 109.0*** 121.0*** sectional design, but by establishing matched pairs from
Male * COVID 2.1 27.9 2020 back to 2019, we approach a counterfactual of inter-
effect 2020 est: what would have been the experience of a highly
Male * COVID 2.9 4.8 similar person before and then during the pandemic? We
effect 2021 focus primarily on the first year of the pandemic. The
matching approach uses ideas similar to those of Vagni
Note: The coefficient values are unstandardized.
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. and Breen (2021), who use pair matching to identify the
effect of childbirth on women's career trajectories. From
these pairs, we can examine the distribution of change,
using the same BIC-based model selection process as we which captures more closely how individual lives were
did for the primary childcare analysis. We find that the affected. To what will these average differences translate
best fitting model includes sex-specific COVID-19 effects at the individual level? For example, the average increase
and an auto-regressive error structure (ρ estimated at in secondary childcare for women could be 1 h, but this
0.28). The estimates, reported in Table 2, quantify what is could have arisen from everyone experiencing a 1-h shift
visually apparent in Figure 3. Specifically, time spent on or at another extreme, one-eighth of women experiencing
secondary childcare for females in households with chil- an 8 h increase while all others do not change. We wish
dren under the age of 13 is 6 h daily in Q1 of 2005 to establish what actually happened, somewhere between
decreasing to 5.5 h daily in Q1 of 2019.7 Again, the dark these two extremes, and examine the distribution of such
line represents the predicted regression line with quar- differences by sex. Matching provides synthetic, within-
terly effects. Men report nearly 2 h less time spent on this person comparisons across years.
activity, on average. What is most striking is that both While we performed the matching using a slightly
men and women report about 30 min more SCC in 2020 larger sample, we report the findings from the sample
and 2021 according to the model (coefficients: COVID restricted to partnered individuals to address the proxim-
effect along with non-significant male interactions). ity hypothesis more precisely. Our goal is to determine
These findings suggest that for SCC there is no change in whether the averages we identified in RQ2 are pure loca-
the gender gap associated with COVID-19, but the overall tion shifts of the whole distribution or whether only some
pattern of a male–female gap in total hours persists. Nota- portion of the distribution changed, isolating effects to a
bly, there is apparently no reversion in SCC in 2021 (the subset of individuals.
magnitude of the effects across 2020–2021 are not statisti- We first examined PCC and found that at the 90th
cally distinguishable). percentile, women reported four and one-half additional
To test the needs exposure theory more precisely with hours of childcare. This suggests that the average differ-
respect to SCC, we re-estimate this model, restricting the ence of about 15 min masks great variability in individual
sample to individuals who indicate having a partner. experiences. The median remained centred near zero, so
Again, data limitations imply that our estimates are a we can say that PCC burdens for females are concen-
lower bound on the potential effect. The results are given trated in a subsample who experienced great change over
in the second column of Table 2. For SCC, the results are the course of the pandemic. Our sensitivity analysis will
suggest that the shift occurred at the 75th percentile as
7
We note that 2021 Q2 was a 17-year high for SCC—the entire time well, and that both of these changes are significant in a
period of the survey—but declined thereafter. manner to be described. For males, the distribution of
12 MARLO ET AL.
F I G U R E 3 Mean daily time spent on secondary childcare for household children under 13, n = 64,233. Only includes households with
at least one child under the age of 13. The dark line represents the predicted regression line including quarterly effects.
change in PCC does not suggest a subpopulation of males school’, we could not find any indication that these par-
doing more or less childcare than before, and this is con- ents were wealthier or poorer, more or less educated,
sistent with the RQ2 results. have younger or older children, with more or fewer chil-
The findings for SCC are more dramatic. For females, dren than those who experienced no change. We then
there is a clear location shift in the median, indicating controlled for sex and still could not identify a clear char-
one and a half additional hours of childcare, and this is acterization of those who experienced the shock of eight
estimated to be even larger at the 75th percentile, at additional hours of SCC in 2020. One thing is clear about
almost seven additional hours. Their 90th percentile is this group, however. They are predominantly female,
estimated to be over nine additional hours. While the with about 70% of this population so identified. To fore-
male distribution of change does not indicate a location shadow our RQ4 findings, when we look at those who
shift in the median, changes are now more extreme, and have been identified as combining work with SCC
comparable to females at the 90th percentile. We con- responsibilities, we find that the hours that include SCC
clude that for SCC, a subset of individuals carried the are during ‘typical’ work hours.
brunt of the additional SCC burden, and the majority of The within-person changes in time use associated
these were female. with childcare from 2019 to 2020 suggest that rather than
When we examine the full distribution of these differ- an across-the-board shift in time spent doing childcare, a
ences for the period 2019–2020 (Figure 4), the spike or subset of women and men, but women in particular,
second mode at around 8–10 h of additional SCC for found themselves doing much more childcare. When we
females suggests that this may be occurring during the repeat this matched-pairs analysis for the 2020–2021
workday (to be discussed in RQ4). The effect is less pro- period, we identify several changes in the distribution
nounced for males. indicative of a ‘reversion’ to pre-pandemic levels.
We witness an uneven change in childcare work for
women, so it behoves us to examine whether these indi-
viduals are disproportionately in one demographic group Sensitivity analysis
or another. To do this, we contrasted the (synthetic) indi-
viduals who experienced an increase of 6–10 h of SCC to To test for significant quantile differences, we built
those with 2 to 2 h change (effectively no change, as matched pairs across non-pandemic periods, for example,
some amount of change is induced through inexact 2018–2019, as these constructed individual-level differ-
matching). While we contend that an addition of 8 h is ences in childcare provide us with expectations for differ-
consistent with being home during the workday and ences when there can be no pandemic effect. This
essentially watching the child when they are in ‘Zoom approach is a placebo test. The comparisons that we
FIGURE 4 Distribution of differences in secondary childcare between matched pairs, n = 441 pairs, 2019–2020.
make under this test are distributional: do quantiles of significant distributional differences are at the 75th and
the distributions of change during the pandemic differ 90th percentiles for females (+1 h and +2 h, respec-
from those during the placebo interval? We use the statis- tively), while there are no significant changes in any
tical procedure discussed in Wilcox et al. (2013) to test quantile for males. This suggests that our average differ-
five quantiles, 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 0.90 (with a cor- ences documented in RQ2 are driven by the upper half of
rection for multiple comparisons as described in Benja- the distribution of change. This is a more nuanced under-
mini and Hochberg [1995]). standing of the experience of individuals. The results for
We again restrict this placebo test to individuals who SCC are equally illuminating, with significant distribu-
are partnered, as this more precisely addresses the needs tional differences at the 50th and 75th quantiles for
exposure hypothesis. The findings are illustrative and females (+1 h and 40 min and +3 h and 45 min, respec-
inform the results in RQ2. Namely, for PCC, the only tively), while a single significant distributional difference
14 MARLO ET AL.
for males is at the 90th percentile (+4 h and 30 min). course the possibility of a mixture of these
This suggests that the average change post-pandemic characterizations.
reported for RQ2 is driven by the upper half of the female We use cluster analysis to understand patterns in
distribution and the upper tenth of the male distribution. daily life that are otherwise elusive, due to the variation
Even these notable distributional differences reflect in timing and content of sequence data. This allows us to
change beyond expectations, so the absolute level is sort respondents into a small set of types containing pat-
somewhat masked. For example, during the pandemic, terns of similar structure. Following Lesnard (2010) and
the change at the 75th percentile of daily (weekday) Studer and Ritschard (2015), we chose the longest com-
hours that partnered females spent doing SCC was nearly mon subsequence (LCS) distance, which privileges the
7 h, but almost 4 h of this change was deemed ‘expected’ timing or ordering of the patterns of activity so important
under the placebo test. This can be thought of as natural in our study. We used hierarchical clustering approaches
year-to-year variation in SCC combined with the limita- common to this field, and Ward's distance method of
tions of the matching process. Nevertheless, the 75th per- agglomeration. The number of clusters was determined
centile for females is (significantly) over 3 h larger than via the highest mean value of the normalized silhouette
expected, and this yields a population of women doing width, Calinski–Harabasz index, and Hubert & Levin C
over 7 h of SCC per day in 2020. index (cf. Hennig & Liao, 2013; Hubert & Levin, 1976).
The number of clusters tested ranged from 2 to 10. We
examined other metrics as a robustness check, and our
Emerging patterns in time use (RQ4): findings are robust to the choices typical of a sequence
Revealed using cluster analysis analysis.
The sequence analysis clustering of men and women
We now use the whole sequence to address our RQ4 and results in three distinct clusters. These clusters could be
to understand the context surrounding childcare—what named, ‘daytime workers with limited to no secondary
other activities are present, what is their patterning, and childcare in evenings’ (Cluster 1), ‘primarily household
do any new patterns emerge that were not present in the activities with primary and/or secondary childcare
decades preceding 2020? We use clustering followed by (Cluster 2)’, and individuals participating ‘leisure and
two graphical summaries in this analysis: the sequence of other activities, but not childcare’ (Cluster 3). See
state distributions and individual sequence plot (index Figure 5, top panels, for the 2019 clustering. These three
plots), as implemented in functions seqdplot and seqiplot clusters fit naturally into Vagni and Cornwell (2018)'s
in the R package TraMineR (Fasang & Liao, 2013; typology, as they are in fact what their types would col-
Gabadinho et al., 2011). We return to the full dataset for lapse into, when many activities are collapsed into a sin-
this analysis so that we may quantify and identify gle state, as we have done. We find these consistent
changes or emergent patterns in the full population. patterns in 2019 and every year prior. Note that in Clus-
Faced with a wide variety of patterns in time use for ter 2 childcare activities clearly dominate, with about half
the whole population, we seek to summarize ‘typical’ of the workday period consisting of SCC and almost a
patterns to determine whether 2020 was just another year quarter of it consisting of PCC. In 2020, we do not iden-
like any other, with the caveat that the fraction of the tify a new pattern so much as a qualitative shift in cluster
population using their time one way or another may have 2, which contains a ‘new’ activity and itself has become
changed. The work of Vagni and Cornwell (2018) demon- more prevalent (Figure 5, bottom panels).
strates that across many different countries, people tend What appeared to be a ‘household/childcare activi-
to spend their time in a manner that can be characterized ties’ cluster in all previous years became a combination
by eight distinct typologies, using cluster analysis of time of those activities and SCC with daytime work. Moreover,
use sequences. We conduct a similar analysis of our the group of exclusively working individuals (Cluster 1)
ATUS data, collapsing activities into those most relevant decreased from 46% to 39%, while those at home, often
to our study. By clustering time use patterns across the multitasking, increased from 9% to 12%. This indicates a
entire day, we develop both a typology and a partition of qualitative change in Vagni and Cornwell's (2018) typol-
individuals into those types. We compare typologies over ogy, as the formerly unpaid work cluster emerged with a
time, noting whether the number of individuals in each substantial subpopulation that combines work and
type (and potentially the types themselves) changed dur- unpaid work in the home. Given that the remaining 4%
ing the pandemic. At one extreme, the workday itself change is into the leisure cluster, it is also possible that
could have shifted (earlier or later) to accommodate the the ‘Great Resignation’ is evident in these data as shed-
extra childcare, while at another, more people have regu- ding of ‘traditional employment’ patterns. These changes
lar workdays, with more instances of SCC. There is of in activity patterns inform RQ4; we have evidence that
FIGURE 5 State distributions of the clusters.
F I G U R E 6 The 2020 activity sequences by cluster and sex. Each cluster has been resampled (with replacement, n = 1000) to more
accurately reflect the within cluster split between males and females.
typical daily activities have shifted away from exclusively differentiate between two people each doing 4 h of work/
working or exclusively doing household and childcare to SCC, one in the first half of the workday and the other in
the multitasking challenge of working while doing sec- the second half, and a single individual doing 8 h contin-
ondary childcare during regular working hours. uously. Focusing only on the 2020 clusters, we observe
The natural next question is, ‘who are the people in that women are slightly underrepresented in cluster
each cluster?’ We focus on differences by sex. In 1 (43% female), but are substantially overrepresented in
Figure 6, we use a resampling technique to portray the cluster 2, (75% female) which is the cluster with the
portion in each sex represented in the cluster as part of emergent work/SCC activity. The fraction of individuals
an index-plot that reveals individual activities, rather that fall into each cluster are 39%, 12%, and 49%, respec-
than time-varying densities. This also allows us to tively, and the mean ages are 46.2, 38.7, and 59.1, the
16 MARLO ET AL.
latter being consistent with increased ‘leisure’ at older bear the burden of primary childcare compared with
ages. We see that females are disproportionately doing fathers and provide empirical evidence for that, begin-
childcare, and some of these individuals have likely ning with the year of data analysed by our study, 2004
‘moved’ from the working cluster 1 to cluster 2 during and onward. In addition, by decomposing childcare into
this initial phase of the pandemic. two important components, primary childcare and sec-
We note that in 2021, this typology still holds, and the ondary childcare, and by analysing each separately, we
pattern of increased work with SCC remains for both provide additional insight, beyond the other studies cited,
sexes. Figure 6 suggests several stylized facts about the into these two aspects of time spent on childcare by
different experiences of men and women during the pan- mothers and fathers. With respect to primary childcare,
demic. First, women are underrepresented in the group our data consistently show from 2004 onward, that
that works exclusively and overrepresented among those mothers spent an average of twice as much time per day
who work at the same time as they do childcare. In com- as fathers (1 h and 40 min vs. 50 min); and with respect
parison to 2019 (not shown), both men and women to secondary childcare, we find that the difference to be
moved from the first group to the second group during even more dramatic over this same period. Mothers spent
the pandemic, with a larger number of women working an average of 6 h/day on secondary childcare, while
and doing secondary childcare, but the change for men is fathers spent an average of 4 h/day on secondary child-
greater in a relative sense. This analysis reinforces the care, a 2-h daily gap.
findings of RQ3, in that individuals moving from cluster When we examined the change in time spent on
1 to 2 (largely female) experienced a dramatic shift in sec- childcare during the pandemic, our results are not consis-
ondary childcare activity, essentially for their full work- tent with those of other studies in this area. For example,
days. Had the 1 h increase in average secondary childcare other studies have reported trends toward a more equita-
been spread evenly over all individuals with children in ble division of time spent on childcare by mothers and
the household (one third of this sample), we would have fathers (Carlson et al., 2021; Craig & Churchill, 2020;
witnessed a different pattern in these clusters, in which a Schafer et al., 2020; Yerkes et al., 2020); our study does
minor part of each day (for a third of them) shifted away not. We find that while the pandemic increased the child-
from working without childcare responsibilities to work- care time-use burden for both mothers and fathers, it did
ing with them. Of course, a portion of those moving out so far more for mothers than fathers. As a result, our
of cluster 1 could also shift to exclusively primary child- findings do not provide support for the theories of needs
care, if they no longer worked, but we found limited evi- exposure and parental proximity. We do not observe a
dence of this. move toward greater equality in the division of childcare
responsibilities postpandemic, but rather less in 2020.
More specifically, based on time-use diary data and con-
DISC USS I ON trolling for secular and seasonal trends, our models indi-
cate that during the initial year of the pandemic, there
Capitalizing on the natural experiment provided by the was an increase in mothers' daily time spent on primary
COVID-19 pandemic, the availability of recent time use childcare by 15–20 min, depending on the sample ana-
data from the nationally representative American Time lysed, and no increase for fathers. This difference faded
Use Survey, and the use of sophisticated statistical by 2021, but the pre-existing gap between men and
methods, the current study was able to estimate, over a women, estimated via a model to be about 45 min of pri-
17-year period, the trend in time spent on childcare and mary childcare per day, remained. With respect to sec-
household work by both mothers and fathers and to test ondary childcare, increases are more comparable across
the common elements of the related theories of needs sexes. Parents increased their time spent on secondary
exposure and parental proximity against the theory of childcare by about 40 min/day in 2020, while that
entrenchment/exacerbation of gender inequality. We did increase diminished to about 30 min in 2021; the gap in
so by investigating whether, in fact, the division of child- SCC was unaffected. However, looking more closely at
care responsibilities became more equitable because of partnered individuals, we conclude that the additional
the pandemic when many of the cited workplace barriers burden for women was twice that of men in 2020. Taking
have been removed (Boston College Center for Work and both years and both types of childcare into account, our
Family, 2019; Lenhart et al., 2019). results suggest that contrary to other studies in this area
The results of our study are consistent with many that have used retrospective, self-report data from sur-
other studies, as cited in this article, on the pre-pandemic veys, the division of childcare responsibilities was not
division of time spent on childcare between mothers and found to become more equitable as a result of the pan-
fathers. In particular, we find that mothers continue to demic, but rather less, in 2020.
In the introduction, we pointed out that self-report reverted following the initial year of the pandemic. We
response data from surveys are subject to social desirability find that a ‘reversion’ to pre-pandemic behaviour
and recall bias. In addition to these limitations, surveys occurred for primary but not for secondary childcare, at
also have been described as lacking in their ability to pro- least when examined using sequence analysis. A sensitiv-
vide for the estimation of time spent in ‘multiple brief ity analysis of distributional differences controlling for
activities’ (Yavorsky et al., 2015, p. 665). Consistent with partnered individuals suggests that SCC has essentially
these deficits, methodological studies that have compared reverted to pre-pandemic levels for this group, so we
surveys with time-use diaries have shown the former to be must interpret the lack of full reversion in the 2021
less accurate and less reliable than the latter in providing sequence analysis with caution. An examination of 2022
time use estimates (Lee & Waite, 2005; Press & data, when it becomes available, is advised.
Townsley, 1998). Because time-use diary data are not In sum, this study tests the common elements of the
based on perceptions or retrospective thinking as they are theories of needs exposure and parental proximity against
for surveys, but rather on the objective and frequent the theory of entrenchment/exacerbation of gender
recording of actual time spent in activities, research has inequality by addressing the question of whether by vir-
shown that time-use diaries provide unbiased estimates of tue of the pandemic and being at home, fathers in fact
time spent on activities (Juster et al., 2003). Methodologi- spent more time involved in childcare and household
cal studies such as these bolster our own findings that work, both absolutely and relatively when compared with
based on time-use diary data the pandemic did not reduce mothers than they did pre-pandemic. There is evidence
the uneven division of time spent on childcare (primary that childcare activity increased for both sexes. Although
and secondary) by mothers and fathers, but rather appears the existing gap appears to have grown for primary child-
to have increased it in total, at least during its first year. care as well as for secondary childcare in partnered indi-
Unlike other studies in this area, which only report viduals during the height of the pandemic, the additional
estimates of time spent on childcare in the aggregate, as burden of secondary childcare appears eventually to have
an average, our study, strengthened by a pair-matching been borne equally by women and men by the second
process, also provides insight into the individual experi- year of the pandemic, which can be characterized as
ence of change over the course of the pandemic on time entrenchment of existing inequality.
spent in childcare. The results of this approach reveal that In tackling each research question, we encountered
a smaller subset of the population, more often mothers some limitations that we now discuss. For the analyses of
than fathers, take on a greater burden. That is, while the the interrupted time series of primary and secondary
overall increase for secondary childcare was about 40 min childcare activities, we assume that prior trends in time
more per day more, on average, there is evidence as shown use would have continued, if not for the pandemic. Given
in Figure 4 that this is driven by 15% of the population the thorough time-series model used (quarterly effects,
increasing time spent in secondary childcare in 2020 by autoregressive errors), we feel confident in making this
about 8 h. Concurrently, our analysis of the profile of assumption. However, and more substantively, incom-
childcare time use captured by the overall distribution sug- plete data in the first and second quarters of 2020 leave
gests that rather than a median shift, change primarily unknown the precise experience particularly in the sec-
occurs for individuals in the 75th and 90th percentiles of ond quarter. Perhaps men did initially contribute more to
the distribution (those who experience the largest change, primary childcare, although it is just as possible that
such as going from 4 to 12 h/day). This shows how aver- women bore an even greater initial burden. Our model-
ages mask important heterogeneity—the workday shifted based comparisons control for a quarterly trend, so we
to the home and secondary childcare joined it in 2020 can say with confidence that the gender gap was signifi-
rather than all parents doing about the same amount of cantly larger in the third and fourth quarters of 2020. We
additional care. Our sequence analysis was able to pin- also lack information on whether there was a second
point the timing of secondary childcare by sex, and to adult participating in childcare activities within the fam-
uncover emergent trends. Qualitatively, a small cluster ily unit, so we must assume that its presence was either
involving household work and childcare, formerly called minimal or independent of respondent's gender.
‘unpaid work’ has now shifted to one which includes a The matched pairs analysis relies heavily on the qual-
subpopulation for whom childcare takes place at the same ity of the matching process. We repeated this process in
time as paid work. The multitasking cluster includes work pre-pandemic years to be able to compare our findings to
and childcare as a key element of many people's days. the ‘natural’ level of year-to-year change that we can
We note that by using over 15-years of time series identity and found it to be smaller and perfectly symmet-
data, adjusted for seasonal trends, we were able to inves- ric in the absence of ‘shocks’. Were we able to improve
tigate whether the increases in time spent on childcare the match quality with a larger set of demographics, a
18 MARLO ET AL.
larger sample (to potentially refine the geographic and common for women initially or during COVID. In explor-
demographic nature of matches), or better, longitudinal atory analyses (not shown, using the ‘ever worked from
evidence, we would improve the precision of our differ- home’ proxy of WFH), we found: (1) Our RQ1/RQ2 find-
ence estimates. Longitudinal analyses contain their own ings hold even when we restrict the sample to those we
challenges for data collection during a pandemic, of have identified as working from home. (2) Sex-based dif-
course. To the extent that we can obtain longitudinal data ferences in working from home are not driving SCC find-
without sacrificing the quality of the instrument in ings, since men were more likely to be working from
recording daily activity, we would be able to answer more home before 2020, and men and women experienced
definitively the question of movement within the time approximately the same relative change in the proportion
use typology (RQ4). An important limitation of the of working from home in 2020/2021. Moreover, we have
sequence analysis used for RQ4 is embedded in the clus- shown that working and having secondary childcare
tering procedure. Namely, we must establish a metric for responsibilities is a new pattern. Our study, through multi-
comparison of nominal types, and the resulting clusters ple analyses, clearly demonstrates that the SCC burden is
can be sensitive to this choice. In our application, after attributed more to women, and since an emergent group
exploring a wide variety of metrics and methods, we is working with SCC, this is not a downstream effect of
arrive at the same time use clusters, and these are consis- pandemic-induced unemployment.
tent with the work of prior research in related areas. We Future research, with longitudinal data, could build a
have indirect evidence that individuals moved out of the more complete roadmap of the movement between time-
traditional work outside the home pattern to working use types over the life course. International data com-
within the home and doing secondary childcare, and our bined with information on more ‘regional’ shocks, such
sequence analysis also suggests that some of these as economic or migratory ones, would provide a deeper
workers became the ‘greatly resigned’, joining the ‘lei- understanding of how humans organize their households
sure/other’ cluster. Sample size, match quality, or lack of in periods of instability and disequilibrium. Policies that
having truly longitudinal data limit our ability to quantify will help change the long held societal views regarding
this movement more precisely or to compare it to a nor- mothers as the primary caretaker in childcare are still
mal level of ‘churn’ between activity types in the absence needed. These could focus on the continual removal of
of a shock. However, the cluster analysis reinforces the barriers that prevent greater gender equality in the divi-
findings of the matching analysis, which is an important sion of childcare responsibilities, such as extended paren-
contribution, however limited by the design. tal leaves for both mothers and fathers, hybrid work
Although the ATUS is a thorough and comprehensive arrangements that allow for work from home, flexible
survey, it is cross-sectional and the detailed questions work schedules, changes in the culture of the work envi-
about work and childcare are limited to a single respon- ronment that emphasize the attachment and care of both
dent even when a partner is present. All activities are mothers and fathers to their children. Furthermore, stud-
recorded with a location, so we are able to infer whether ies on the effectiveness of such policies are critical if soci-
someone was working from home in a given 30-min inter- etal and cultural changes are to materialize.
val. However, we lack a specific question that would
define someone as always or even semi-regularly ‘working DA TA AVAI LA BI LI TY S T ATE ME NT
from home’. Lacking this, we let ‘ever worked from home’ The data that support the findings of this study are
proxy for a more nuanced measure, and only report rela- openly available in joemarlo/atus-matching at https://
tive changes in this measure as indicators for this modal- github.com/joemarlo/atus-matching.
ity. The survey's cross-sectional nature implies that we
cannot know whether someone was employed in the year ORCID
prior to the pandemic. Thus, we cannot rule out the possi- Joseph Marlo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4681-0506
bility that some increase in primary childcare activity was Marc A. Scott https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1537-0894
due to the combination of job loss and loss of external Sharon L. Weinberg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1283-
childcare or schooling. Should the job losses be dispropor- 7639
tionately attributed to females, this, combined with chil-
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Received: 21 November 2022 Accepted: 17 May 2023

Who's minding the children: Gender equity in the first

Joseph Marlo | Marc A. Scott | Sharon L. Weinberg

Department of Applied Statistics, Social

DATA Operational definition of childcare

Interrupted time series Estimating daily time spent on childcare

Disaggregated by sex, Figure 2 shows that the primary

FIGURE 5 State distributions of the clusters.

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