Duet or Solo? An Analysis of Paternal Involvement in Childcare in Korea by Couples’ Co-Participation Perspective

Eunhye Kang

This paper examines father involvement in childcare from the perspective of couples’ co-participation in care tasks and factors associated with fathers’ childcare time performed by fathers alone. Drawing on the Korean Time Use Survey 2014, and a sample of dual-earner parents with preschool aged children, results show that the time spent in childcare alone by the father was considerably less than that of mothers. About 80% of mothers’ total childcare time was performed alone compared with 59.5% for fathers. For routine care, about 64.8% of fathers’ routine care time was performed alone by fathers. OLS regression results indicate that work hours of both mothers and fathers primarily shape the context in which fathers’ sole charge of care tasks occur. The egalitarian gender role attitude fathers hold was found to be another significant determinant of the total amount of time fathers spent on performing care tasks alone and the amount of time fathers spent on performing routine care tasks alone. Level of fathers’ educational attainment did not make differences to their solo care time.

---

Time Use and Gender Inequality in India: Differences in Employment and Related, Unpaid Domestic, and Caregiving Activities

Pallavi Gupta, Falguni Pattanaik

The objective of this study is to analyze time allocation by gender in ‘employment and related’, ‘unpaid domestic’, and ‘unpaid caregiving’ activities for the individuals representing work in public and private spheres in India. Employing Indian Time-use data 2019, this study examines time distribution of Indian men and women in these activities. Furthermore, the variation in intensity of time allocation due to socio-economic and demographic factors of individuals has been assessed using ordinary least square regression. The study reveals important gender inequalities prevail in the time spent for all the three-activity categories. Indian men devote considerable time in ‘employment and related’ activities whereas Indian women spend more time in the other two activities. The time spent in ‘unpaid domestic’ activities by Indian women is more for those who are less educated, socially marginalized, unemployed, and belong to poorer households whereas ‘unpaid caregiving’ activities are more intensive for women who are highly educated, socially marginalized, not in the labour force and have more children at home. Originality/value : the present study contributes to understanding the disproportionate burden of ‘employment and related’, ‘unpaid domestic’ and ‘unpaid caregiving’ activities and the intersectional dynamics that play a significant role in the allocation of time use across the gender lines using the latest data available in India.

---

MyTimeUse: An Online Implementation of the Day-Reconstruction Method

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, Liana C. Sayer

Time diaries can record precise measures of daily activities but few such diaries have been developed for use via the internet, which limits our knowledge of how social, economic, and demographic factors affect daily life and our ability to investigate trends over time. We have developed, refined, and deployed an original online time diary, mytimeuse.com, to study daily life in a longitudinal sample of graduate students and a longitudinal sample of U.S. residents recruited online. This article overviews the features we implemented to increase data quality and response rates. The diary is based on the day-reconstruction method, which has participants report on each primary activity in a selected day, then records further contextual information about the activity, such as social engagement, multitasking, and emotions. We recruited online participants to complete three time diaries and report their evaluations of our platform. Feedback indicates most participants found the diary to be intuitive and easy to use, and most who made an account with the diary platform fully participated in our study.

---

Is Telecommuting Family-Friendly? Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

Harley Frazis

It has been argued that paid telecommuting is family-friendly, allowing workers the flexibility to attend to the needs of children or household tasks. This paper examines telecommuting using the 2017-18 American Time Use Survey module on Leave and Job Flexibilities. I examine the characteristics of telecommuters, and whether time is allocated toward family-oriented activities—or, to the contrary, toward work- in response to telecommuting. The main family-relevant effect of telecommuting is found to be an increase in childcare as a secondary activity.

---