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Gendered Expectations? Reconsidering Single Fathers’ Child‐Care Time
Author(s) -
Hook Jennifer L.,
Chalasani Satvika
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00540.x
Subject(s) - child care , single mothers , time use survey , psychology , developmental psychology , single parent family , sociology , social psychology , face (sociological concept) , single parent , demographic economics , economics , medicine , social science , nursing , engineering , work (physics) , mechanical engineering
We take a fresh look at an important question in the sociology of gender and family: Do single fathers “mother”? We add to the theoretical debate by proposing that single fathers face competing interactional pressures, to simultaneously act like mothers and men. Using nationally representative data from the American Time Use Survey 2003 – 2006 ( N = 16,654), we compare the time single fathers spend on child care to other parent types, paying special attention to differences in employment profiles, household composition, and care arrangements. Accounting for these differences, single fathers spend slightly less time caring for children than do mothers, but more time than married fathers. Interesting differences emerge, however, depending upon the age of the youngest child in the household.