Once the dust settles. Did the 1990s lead to re-traditionalization? Time use evidence from Scandinavia

Jeff Neilson, Lund University
Maria A. Stanfors, Lund University

Research indicates that the transition to parenthood intensifies gendered patterns in time use. This strengthens a traditional household division of labour, whereby women perform more child care and housework than men. We know less about how these patterns develop over time in different countries, or whether changes trend similarly between neighboring countries. We know even less whether financial crises influence the household division of labour. This cross-country comparative study investigates the impact of parenthood on gendered weekday time use in paid work, housework, child care and leisure in Sweden, Norway and Finland. We explore how it changed during the 1990s, a turbulent period where Sweden and Finland endured substantial economic crises, while Norway experienced greater economic stability. We know from Sweden that during the 1990s, parents became more equal in sharing housework and child care duties, and parenthood affected men and women more similarly by the end of the decade (Dribe & Stanfors, 2009). We thus ask whether this was a unique Swedish phenomenon, and if so, were developments connected more so to economic crisis, or to societal changes towards gender equality. Using six waves of time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS), we perform multivariate Tobit regressions, comparing what happened in Sweden during the 1990s to Norway and Finland during the same period. Our results indicate that in all three countries, parenthood by the end of the 1990s affected men and women in a more similar way than before. Gendered patterns of time use in housework and child care showed a less traditional, gender converging pattern. Since these changes were not unique to the most crisis-stricken countries of Sweden and Finland, our findings suggest the developments were not a byproduct of economic crisis, but rather due to underlying societal changes towards greater gender equality.