Volume 27 - Article 3 | Pages 53–84  

Grandparenting and mothers’ labour force participation: A comparative analysis using the Generations and Gender Survey

By Arnstein Aassve, Bruno Arpino, Alice Goisis

This article is part of the Special Collection 11 "Intergenerational family ties in Europe: Multiple linkages between individuals, families and social contexts"

Abstract

Background: It is well known that the provision of public childcare plays an important role for women labour force participation and its availability varies tremendously across countries. In many countries, informal childcare is also important and typically provided by the grandparents, but its role on mothers’ employment is not yet well understood. Understanding the relationship between labour supply decisions and grandparental childcare is complex. While the provision of grandparental childcare is clearly a function of the social and institutional context of a country, it also depends on family preferences, which are typically unobserved in surveys.

Objective: We analyze the role of informal childcare provided by grandparents on mothers’ labour force participation keeping unobserved preferences into account.

Methods: Bivariate probit models with instrumental variables are estimated on data from seven countries (Bulgaria, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Russia and The Netherlands) drawn from the Generations and Gender Survey.

Results: We find that only in some countries mothers’ employment is positively and significantly associated with grandparents providing childcare. In other countries, once we control for unobserved preferences, we do not find this effect.

Conclusions: The role of grandparents is an important element to reconcile work and family for women in some countries. Our results show the importance of considering family preferences and country differences when studying the relationship between grandparental childcare and mothers’ labour supply.

Comments: Our results are consistent with previous research on this topic. However, differently from previous studies, we conduct separate analyses by country and show that the effect of grandparental childcare varies considerably. The fact that we also include in the analyses Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia and Georgia is an important novelty as there are no studies on this issue for these countries.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

The association between childlessness and voting turnout in 38 countries
Volume 47 - Article 14

Time preferences and fertility: Evidence from Italy
Volume 44 - Article 50

The impact of COVID-19 on fertility plans in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom
Volume 43 - Article 47

Life after death: Widowhood and volunteering gendered pathways among older adults
Volume 43 - Article 21

Childcare arrangements and working mothers’ satisfaction with work‒family balance
Volume 42 - Article 19

When richer doesn’t mean thinner: Ethnicity, socioeconomic position, and the risk of child obesity in the United Kingdom
Volume 41 - Article 23

Family histories and the demography of grandparenthood
Volume 39 - Article 42

Navigating between two cultures: Immigrants' gender attitudes toward working women
Volume 38 - Article 35

Who brings home the bacon? The influence of context on partners' contributions to the household income
Volume 35 - Article 41

What is your couple type? Gender ideology, housework sharing, and babies
Volume 32 - Article 30

Youth prospects in a time of economic recession
Volume 29 - Article 36

Women´s wages and childbearing decisions: Evidence from Italy
Volume 22 - Article 19

Does fertility decrease household consumption?: An analysis of poverty dynamics and fertility in Indonesia
Volume 20 - Article 26

Albania: Trends and patterns, proximate determinants and policies of fertility change
Volume 19 - Article 11

Youth poverty and transition to adulthood in Europe
Volume 15 - Article 2

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Trajectories of US parents’ divisions of domestic labor throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
Volume 51 - Article 12    | Keywords: childcare, COVID-19, division of labor, fathers, gender, housework, mothers

Are highly educated partners really more gender egalitarian? A couple-level analysis of social class differentials in attitudes and behaviors
Volume 50 - Article 34    | Keywords: attitudes, couple analysis, education, educational level, gender, gender roles, housework, social class differentials

Culture portability from origin to destination country: The gender division of domestic work among migrants in Italy
Volume 47 - Article 20    | Keywords: childcare, culture, epidemiology, gender, housework, migration

Gender inequality in domestic chores over ten months of the UK COVID-19 pandemic: Heterogeneous adjustments to partners’ changes in working hours
Volume 46 - Article 19    | Keywords: childcare, COVID-19, employment, gender division of child care, gender division of labor, gender inequalities, housework

Household transitions between ages 5 and 15 and educational outcomes: Fathers and grandparents in Peru
Volume 46 - Article 14    | Keywords: child development, fathers, grandparents, household transitions, Peru