College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item What Makes a Good Dad? Contexts, Measures and Covariates of Paternal Care(2008-06-04) Wang, Rong; Bianchi, Suzanne M.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)American fathers devote significantly less time than mothers to rearing their children. Using new time diary data from the 2003-2005 American Time Use Survey, this dissertation documents the variation of father involvement in different family contexts, develops more comprehensive measures of paternal care, and provides an in-depth examination of the major covariates contributing to fathers' time allocation to childrearing. Compared to married resident fathers, single fathers - specifically, "sole" single fathers who are the only adult in the family - spend significantly more time providing all types of childcare except playing with children. Sole single fathers spend similar amounts of time with their children as married fathers, although their passive care time is less. Cohabiting fathers and married fathers demonstrate similar parenting time patterns. Lacking daily interaction with their children, non-resident fathers provide less than one-third of direct childcare and spend much less overall time with their children than resident fathers do. When non-resident fathers are with their children, their time is mostly spent on playing with children and performing necessary managerial responsibilities (e.g., attending children's events and school meetings, picking up/dropping off children). However, non-resident fathers' time "minding" children - a measure that gauges passive care of children not requiring physical presence - is almost 85 percent of what resident fathers report. Further, divorced non-resident fathers spend more time providing childcare than (re)married non-resident fathers, especially in physical and recreational activities. Father care in two-parent families is associated with a number of covariates that reflect demands on fathers and their capacity to provide care. First, fathers' direct care time and time with children, but not their minding time, decreases as their children age. Second, fathers tend to do more childcare when they have boys rather than girls in the family. Third, although fathers appear to do more childcare when their spouses are employed, this happens only among those whose spouses are least educated or best educated. Finally, despite the common assumption that better educated fathers are more "involved," the childcare time differences are mainly between fathers with high school (or below) education and everyone else.Item Mothers' Level of Attachment to the Labor Market Following the Birth of a Second Child(2004-05-05) Peltola, Pia; Kahn, Joan; SociologyABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: MOTHERS’ LEVEL OF ATTACHMENT TO THE LABOR MARKET FOLLOWING THE BIRTH OF A SECOND CHILD Pia Kristiina Peltola, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Joan Kahn Department of Sociology Increased employment of mothers with infants has prompted an avalanche of studies about how mothers balance paid work and family. Most of that research has focused on how the birth of the first child impacts mothers’ employment. Less is known about what happens after the birth of a second child. Combining the life course perspective with the classic labor supply theory and employing the 1979-1998 NLSY data, this study examines how mothers balance paid work and family when they have two children. Some comparisons are made between the first and a second birth. The first comparison, the survival distribution of mothers’ return to market work, finds no significant difference in the rate at which mothers return to employment after the first and a second birth. The results of Cox hazard models show some similarities and some differences in the determinants for the timing of return to paid work after the two births. They also highlight the importance of considering the impact of past life experiences on current decisions. Results of the competing risk models show that some predictors for full time and part time returns differ. This study also examines what mothers’ employment is like after returning to paid work by examining mothers’ employment hours during the preschool years of the second child. Very different employment patterns are observed between those who began working full time and those who started part time. The changes in employment hours during this period would be missed without longitudinal data. The large number of mothers dropping out of the labor force over the five-year period suggests that reports focusing on the return to market work only overestimate mothers’ economic activity. Fluctuations in the employment hours underline the dynamic nature of the balancing act: the equilibrium keeps shifting as children grow older, and mothers keep readjusting and chasing the optimal balance between care work and market work.