Daddies and Day Care: The Role of Employment and Childcare Characteristics in Work-Family Conflict and Parenting Stress

Background: Numerous studies document the vulnerability of women’s employment to disruptions in childcare, but, to our knowledge, no studies have examined factors associated with disruptions in childcare and employment as reported by fathers. Scholars have documented the lack of sufficient data on fathers (in general) in our national surveys, specifically data drawn from fathers’ own reports of involvement and care experiences, as well as data from low-income, unmarried fathers. Research on fathers’ experiences with work-family conflict is particularly pertinent as the number of male primary caregivers rises. In light of these trends, families have had to renegotiate work and caregiving responsibilities.

To fill a gap in the literature on fatherhood and work-family conflict (particularly for low-income families), we address the following research questions:

1. What demographic characteristics are associated with levels of work-family conflict among fathers with young children?
2. Over time, in what ways are characteristics of work and characteristics of childcare linked to childcare instability and related employment disruption for father-caregivers and other fathers of young children?
3. Over time, is there a relationship between characteristics of work (particularly perceived work-family conflict), characteristics of childcare (particularly childcare instability), and parenting stress among for father-caregivers and other fathers of young children?

Methods: We drew data for our analyses from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort survey of 4,898 children born between 1998 and 2000, in eighteen large U.S. cities. We used primarily father-report data collected from waves two, three, four, and five (child ages one, three, five, and nine). The variables of interest include work-family conflict, a composite measure derived from three Likert-scale survey items; childcare instability, unanticipated cancellation by care provider in the past month; employment disruption, including work absences related to childcare cancellation or a child’s illness; employment loss, whether the respondent ever quit work/school due to instabilities in childcare; and parenting stress, a composite measure derived from four Likert-scale survey items.

To take advantage of the longitudinal nature of the data and capture the impact of covariates on outcomes over time, we use within-person fixed effect models.

Results: In this sample of primarily low-income fathers, characteristics of employment, including whether employment is formal or informal (“off the books”), number of weekly work hours, and whether the individual works a variable schedule, were stronger predictors of work-life conflict than were demographic characteristics including age, education, and income. Characteristics of employment, particularly working a variable schedule, and characteristics of childcare, particularly provider type, were linked to childcare instability and related employment disruption in ways that supported past research on mothers’ employment. In turn, characteristics of both employment and childcare appeared to operate both directly and via perceived levels of work-family conflict to predictor parenting stress across time.

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings suggest that social work practice and policy efforts directed toward enhancing fathers’ involvement and decreasing fathers’ stress in children’s early years should incorporate efforts to address instabilities in both employment and childcare.