Mothers’ nonstandard work schedules and the use of multiple and center-based childcare
Introduction
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021), approximately 65.8 percent of mothers with children under age 6 years old were employed in 2020. Many of the employed mothers work at a job that requires working evening, night, weekend, or irregular hours. The prevalence of these nonstandard work hours is, in general, higher among younger, less educated, and low-wage workers, and a significant share of them are young mothers. In 2014, for example, 43% of all children in the sample of Survey of Income and Program Participation lived with a parent who worked a nonstandard schedule (Rachidi, 2018). Almost 40% of the young and poor mothers of fragile families worked nonstandard hours in the first three years of childbirth (Rachidi, 2018). Studies that examined the effects of parents’ nonstandard work schedules on children’s outcomes (e.g., Han, 2005, Han and Fox, 2011, Johnson et al., 2012) acknowledged that maternal work schedules affect child outcomes indirectly by influencing families’ childcare arrangements (Han, 2005). Mothers who work nonstandard hours have a limited childcare choice as most formal childcare is open only during the weekdays and 9-to-5 daytime window. For mothers whose work hours are outside the standard schedule, patching together a variety of arrangements and relying on informal care (e.g., relatives or friends) may be necessary to stay in the labor market (Enchautegui et al., 2015, Laughlin, 2013, Morrissey, 2008).
The patchwork of multiple childcare arrangements or dependence on informal care may indicate instability and poor quality of childcare services that can compromise positive child development (Han, 2004). Concerns about the stability and quality of childcare are significant not only for child outcomes but also for parents’ employment outcomes and economic well-being. Low-income mothers, mothers with varying shifts, and those who rely on a patchwork of care may experience disruptions in childcare and experience the risk of having to miss their work when there is no social support (Usdansky & Wolf, 2008). For working families with young children, nonstandard work schedules can pose significant challenges to managing a work-family balance (Henly & Lambert, 2005), and the challenges can be overwhelming for low-income families with limited resources (Berry et al., 2008, Urban and Olson, 2005).
Many conceptual frameworks exist to provide explanations as to how a family makes a childcare choice (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1986, Edwards and Rothbard, 2005, Perry-Jenkins and Wadsworth, 2013). Most frameworks point out that working families’ childcare choices are influenced by a range of environmental contexts, primarily by complex demands from the workplace and constrained resources within the family (Meyers & Jordan, 2006). Parent choice of child care can be best understood as an arrangement to meet family and employment demands and social and cultural expectations with available resources and information (Meyers & Jordan, 2006). The demands and resources are factored in parents’ consideration of the cost, location, quality, and availability of childcare services as well as their preferences and work schedules (Folk and Yi, 1994, Han, 2004, Sandstrom and Chaudry, 2012). Child characteristics and developmental needs are also important factors that most parents consider (Johansen et al., 1996, Sandstrom and Chaudry, 2012).
Of numerous work-family environmental factors that affect families’ childcare choice, we focus on mothers' work schedules. Mothers whose regular work hours fall outside of a traditional day schedule may be forced to piece together multiple arrangements to cover such hours. They may prefer relatives as the caregivers of their children because an informal arrangement can be most compatible with their work schedules and cost concerns. Under these circumstances, multiple childcare arrangements may indicate struggles with arranging childcare and having to rely on often less reliable informal arrangements (Harris et al., 2002, Henly and Lyons, 2000). With this backdrop, this study intends to examine the association between mothers’ nonstandard work schedules and their use of multiple and center-based childcare arrangements.
Section snippets
Conceptual framework
Although a range of child, family and environmental factors affect a family’s childcare arrangement, from a working mother’s perspective, the arrangement is made to accommodate her childcare needs often dictated by her workplace demands. The arrangement is also enabled by family resources that the mother can use to satisfy the childcare needs (Meyers & Jordan, 2006). As depicted by Fig. 1 below, a working mother’s workplace demands such as her work schedules (e.g., standard vs. nonstandard
Nonstandard work schedules & multiple childcare arrangements
While studies document that mothers who work nonstandard hours rely mostly on fathers for childcare (Enchautegui et al., 2015), they also need to secure other flexible childcare services to accommodate their work schedules and the schedules of fathers (Kimmel & Powell, 2006). To the authors’ best knowledge, only three previous studies explicitly examined if a maternal nonstandard work schedule is associated with an increased number of childcare arrangements, and their findings are mixed at best
Aim and contribution of this study
This study intends to fill the gaps in the literature discussed above by examining how mothers’ nonstandard work schedules are associated with reliance on multiple and informal childcare arrangements. Our data analyses below focus on finding out to what extent a nonstandard work schedule is associated with a higher probability of using multiple childcare arrangements and a lower probability of using center-based care when we control for the major characteristics of mothers and families as well
Data and sample
This study used the core and topical module data files of Wave 5 of the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). SIPP is a nationally representative longitudinal survey of individuals aged 15 years and older, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The core data file contains information on the survey respondents’ income, employment history, program participation, and demographics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, citizenship, nativity, language
Characteristics of sample children and their families, by mothers' work schedule
Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of sample children and their families by mothers’ work schedule. The children of mothers with a nonstandard work schedule appear to live in a more disadvantaged family structure. While more than 90% of the children whose mothers had a regular day schedule were reference persons’ children, only a little over 80% of those whose mothers had a nonstandard schedule were. Nearly 25% of the children of mothers with a regular day schedule lived in
Discussions and implications
The findings of this study revealed that children whose mothers worked an irregular schedule were significantly more likely to be cared for by multiple caregivers (e.g., relatives and spouses either living together or nearby). Of the various measures of nonstandard work schedules, the unpredictability of schedules appears to be the factor that affects the use of multiple caregivers. Mothers’ work intensity or job characteristics were not associated with the children being in multiple
Declarations
Ethics approval: This study used publicly available existing data and no ethical approval was required.
Informed consent: This study is a secondary analysis of existing data; human subjects and informed consent were not required.
Funding: The authors received no funding for this research.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Author statements
The corresponding author conceptualized the study, reviewed the literature, prepared for and analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. The second author assisted with the literature review.
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