Parents’ Access to Flexible Work Arrangements and Time in Active Caregiving Activities

Abstract

Greater access to flexible work arrangements is considered a solution to many working parents’ challenges balancing the demands of work and family, yet it remains unclear whether such arrangements are associated with parents’ time in the active caregiving activities linked to children’s development and parents’ notions of quality time. We examine this question using data from the American Time Use Survey and Leave and Job Flexibilities Module (2017–2018) (n = 1,874 mothers, n = 1,756 fathers) and linear regression and inverse probability weighting techniques. Results indicate that access to flextime is associated with more active caregiving time for mothers but not fathers. They also provide suggestive evidence that flexplace is associated with more active caregiving time for mothers and fathers and strong evidence that it is associated with more passive caregiving time for both parents. The findings highlight the importance of expanding parents’ access to flexible work options, and the limits of doing so.

Keywords

flexible work parenting child well-being gender & family flextime flexplace

Introduction

Over the past few decades, U.S. parents have faced mounting challenges balancing the demands of work and family (Bianchi, 2011; Nomaguchi, 2009). These challenges have been driven by changes in the nature of work, such as longer work weeks and the rise in nonstandard schedules (Epstein & Kallberg, 2004; Presser, 2005), alongside intensifying parenting norms that require parents to devote greater time to the “intensive” caregiving activities that promote their children’s development (Altintas, 2016; Hays, 1996; Townsend, 2002). To help ameliorate this conflict between work and parenting demands, scholars and practitioners have suggested that parents need greater access to flexible workplace options, such as flextime (the ability to vary the time that work starts and ends) and flexplace (the ability to work from home) (Hill et al., 2008a; Galinsky et al., 2011), for which there are few federal- and state-level mandates (Thébaud & Halcomb, 2019). In further support of this argument, advocates point to research linking parents’ access to flextime and flexplace to greater caregiving time (Carlson et al., 2021; Davis et al., 2015; Lyttelton et al., 2022; Powell & Craig, 2015), as well as worker outcomes that support parents’ caregiving efforts, such as reduced work-family conflict (Casey & Grzywacz, 2008; Hill et al., 2008b) and better mental and physical health (Allen et al., 2013; Kelly et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2020).

Despite this compelling body of literature, it remains unclear whether parents’ access to (and use of) flextime and flexplace are associated with greater time in the intensive or “active” caregiving activities (Kalil et al., 2012) that promote children’s developmental outcomes (Hsin, 2009; Phillips, 2011), such as teaching, playing, and providing physical care to children. Such active caregiving activities—which differ from more “passive” or “secondary” caregiving activities (Stewart & Allard, 2015), such as television watching or doing housework in a child’s presence (e.g., Baizán et al., 2014; Budig & Folbre, 2004)—are also the focus of policies and programs aimed at supporting children’s welfare by promoting active parenting time (Kalil & Mayer, 2016; Waldfogel & Washbrook, 2011). Most U.S. parents also view “good parenting” in terms of active caregiving and aspire to this parenting norm (Bennett et al., 2012; Ishizuka, 2019). Thus, much of parents’ feelings of work family conflict also likely reflect their desires to spend more time in active caregiving activities (Milkie et al., 2010).

Given such factors, we aim to investigate whether parents’ access to flexible work options are associated with their greater time in active caregiving. We do so by using a rich set of measures that delineate flextime and flexplace, as well issues of access, usage, and frequency of usage, which may have different associations with parents’ active caregiving time (McNamara et al., 2012). We also explore separate estimates for mothers and fathers, for whom parenting, household, and work responsibilities differ (Hofäcker & König, 2013; Kim, 2020), and we consider mothers’ and father’s time in three other activities that may also be linked to work flexibility—paid work, domestic work time, and time in “passive” caregiving (Bianchi, 2011; Epstein & Kalleberg, 2004; Noonan et al., 2007; Offer & Schneider, 2011). Data come from a nationally representative sample of employed parents participating in the 2017–2018 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and Leave and Job Flexibilities Module (hereto called the “Leave Module”). The findings will provide new insights into how parents’ access to flextime and flexplace are associated with their active caregiving time and help inform debates around whether parents’ access to flexible work options should be expanded. Such knowledge is especially important following the COVID-19 pandemic, which heightened many parents’ needs for flexible work options as well as concerns over the limited availability of such options.

Theoretical Context and Literature Review

Families today experience a “time squeeze,” in which parenting norms require parents to devote greater amounts of time to intensive caregiving activities (Hays, 1996; Altintas, 2016), yet a larger share of family time is devoted to paid work than in the past (Jacobs & Gerson, 2001). To help address this problem, scholars and practitioners have called for expanded access to flexible work options. A majority of parents support greater workplace flexibility as well. For example, a 2016 survey indicated that 74% of parents preferred a job that offered flextime, and 89% of parents preferred a job with a full-day flexplace option (Reynolds, 2016). Although the adoption of flexible work options by private employers has increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still far from ubiquitous. There also remain vast inequalities in access to flexible work arrangements for lower-income, female, and minority workers, for whom the challenges of balancing the demands of work and family, and need for flexible work options, may be greatest (Golden, 2008; Lambert et al., 2012; Swanberg et al., 2005).

Additionally, there is substantial empirical support for expanding parents’ access to flexible work. To begin, a vast body of research documents the positive benefits of workplace flexibility for a variety of outcomes that promote greater caregiving time (Davis et al., 2015; Frech & Kimbro, 2011), including workers’ mental and physical health, perceptions of work family conflict, and job satisfaction (Allen et al., 2013, 2015; Kelly et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2020). There is also a smaller but growing body of literature that highlights the links between parents’ access to flexible work options and time in general caregiving, including studies documenting a positive association between mothers’ flexplace and caregiving time (Craig & Powell, 2012; Genadek & Hill, 2017; Lyttelton et al., 2022; Noonan et al., 2007; Powell & Craig, 2015); fathers’ use of flexplace and caregiving (Carlson et al., 2021; Lyttelton et al., 2022; Pabilonia & Vernon, 2021), father’s access to flextime for time in routine caregiving (preparing meals, putting children to sleep (Kim, 2020)), and fathers’ use of both flexplace and flextime and family caregiving time (i.e., shared with the mother) (Wray, 2021). However, there has been limited research focusing on active caregiving, particularly in a way that is consistent with prior conceptualizations and measurement of this key dimension of parenting (e.g., Kalil et al., 2012; Musick et al., 2016; Prickett & Augustine, 2021). Moreover, few studies have examined both mothers and fathers and included measures of both flextime and flexplace (for an exception, see Genadek & Hill (2017), which used much older data). Our study aims to address both of these limitations.

Theoretical and Substantive Research on Flexible Work Options and Caregiving Time

Support for the potential for parent’s access to flexible work options to be associated with increased time in active caregiving comes from two bodies of theory. As work-family conflict theory posits (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), competition between work and family demands lead to (1) time-based stains, in which there is insufficient time available to devote to more intensive caregiving activities, like teaching or play, and (2) role-based strains (resulting from feelings of distress, time pressure, and lack of control; (Keeton et al., 2008; Milkie et al., 2019)), creating a shortage of cognitive resources (e.g., focus, energy) required for active caregiving activities (as opposed to passive activities, such as television watching or monitoring, which require less focus and energy) (Crnic & Low, 2002; Musick et al., 2016). Person-fit theory highlights how such time and role-based strains can be combatted by work-related resources, like flexplace and flextime, which enhance parents’ abilities to meet the time and role demands of intensive caregiving activities (Voydanoff, 2005) and create synergies (i.e., the positive transfer of resources; e.g., greater energy) between work and family domains (Grzywacz et al., 2007).

Substantive research highlights several pathways by which this “fit” can occur. In the case of flextime, parents experience greater feelings of scheduling control, which results in less distress and cognitive strains and promotes parents’ own wellbeing (Moen et al., 2011). Parents can also more easily respond to conflicts and unpredictabilities (e.g., a sick child), which are normal features of family life (Gerstel & Clawson, 2018); align their schedules with their children’s in ways that create more shared time in general (Young & Lim, 2014), time during the hours that are less fungible due to children’s schedules (e.g., scheduled activities) (Southerton, 2003), and time when parents have more energy; and adjust their start and end times of work to save commute times (Komma & Srinivasan, 2008). Flexplace also allows for time saved from commuting as well as grooming (Pabilonia & Vernon, 2021). It also facilitates multitasking as a strategy for tackling other responsibilities that interfere with active caregiving time, such as domestic tasks (Offer & Schneider, 2011); eases the transitions between performing work and family roles by integrating work and family domains (Ashforth et al., 2000); and enables parents to avoid many workplace distractions and stressors (Hill et al., 2003; Tietze & Musson, 2005).

Complexities in the Links between Flexible Work Options and Caregiving Time

Despite this theoretical and empirical support, prior research also highlights several factors that challenge our basic expectation. First, the associations between flexible work options and active parenting time may be greater for (or observed only among) mothers versus fathers. This possibility is supported by research which reveals how mothers are more likely than fathers to structure their workday to allow for parenting time (Kaufman & Uhlenberg, 2000); take on the intensive activities parents tend to rate as more tiresome, like management, teaching, and basic case (Musick et al., 2016; McDonnell et al., 2019); and view “quality” (i.e., active) time with their children as fundamental to work-life balance (Milkie et al., 2010). Fathers, on the other hand, tend to devote more of their caregiving time to passive activities such as watching television with or supervising of children (Negraia et al., 2018). Mothers are also more likely than fathers to bear primary responsibility for time inflexible tasks (e.g., management activities like taking children to extracurriculars) (Gerstel & Clawson, 2018; Kim, 2020; Lareau, 2003), whereas fathers with access to flexible work often devote greater time to additional paid work (Carlson et al., 2021; Hofäcker & König, 2013; Lyttelton et al., 2022).

It also remains possible that flextime and flexplace will have insignificant linkages with both fathers’ and mothers’ active caregiving time. This is because flextime can blur the temporal boundaries of work (the notion that work occurs at certain times), leading some parents to work more hours (Blair-Loy, 2009; Noonan & Glass, 2012) and worry they should work more (Badawy & Schieman, 2021). Similarly, flexplace can blur the physical boundaries between work and family domains (Ashforth et al., 2000; Voydanoff, 2005), leading parents to experience more home-based distractions, heightened stressors due to multi-tasking, and feelings that they must devote time to “catching up” on paid or domestic work, rather than active caregiving (Allen et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2020; Noonan & Glass, 2012; Schieman & Young, 2010). Additionally, active caregiving activities are linked to higher levels of stress and fatigue than are many passive care activities (Connelly & Kimmel, 2015; Musick et al., 2016). As such, parents’ access to flexible work options may be associated with greater time in passive caregiving—which parents still find meaningful (Nelson et al., 2014) and rate as more enjoyable than domestic work—but not in the active activities that have the strongest links to child development and norms of good parenting.

Finally, we recognize three conceptual complexities that have implications for our measurement and analytic approach. First, while some parents may have access to flexible work options, they may not utilize them (McNamara et al., 2012); for example, because they have less supervisor support (Stone, 2008) or fear sanctions (Coltrane et al., 2013). Second, prior literature highlights the importance of distinguishing between employee-driven flexibility, in which workers control their own work schedules or location, from employer-driven flexibility, which reflects a management strategy often aimed at meeting fluctuating consumer demand or unanticipated staffing needs (Hill et al., 2008a; Henly et al., 2006). In the case of our study, variable schedules with limited worker control would be an example of employer-driven flextime. Working from home because the employer requires it or to catch up on or continue work (Kim et al., 2020) may reflect employer-driven flexplace. We consider the extent to which our measures reflect employee-, or employer-driven, flexibility as well.

Lastly, greater caregiving demands may require more frequent use of flexible work options for some parents; for example, if their child has a disability. Unfortunately, many of these factors are unmeasured or difficult to account for. Consequently, because neither access nor utilization are randomly distributed across parents and jobs, issues of unobserved variable bias can confound estimates. To help deal with this issue, we combine several strategies. We incorporate multiple measures of flexible work access and utilization to test the robustness of our results to different measurement approaches, and we control for an extensive range of parental demographic and employment characteristics that may be associated with access to flexible work arrangements and parenting time. We also employ an inverse probability weighting (Morgan & Winship, 2015) techniques, which place more weight on cases that are similar to each other in their covariates.

Methods

Data and Sample

ATUS is a nationally representative annual time diary survey of U.S. residents aged 15 years and older, sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The sampling frame is based on a randomly selected subset of households participating in the Current Population Study (CPS). The CPS provides demographic, household, and employment information on respondents and their household members. ATUS provides additional demographic details (e.g., employment status), as well as time diary information on all activities that occurred during a 24-hour window the day before and coded using a complex classification system that allowed us to examine the amount of time parents spend with their child (ren) in different active caregiving activities (and follow the approach taken in other studies; Kalil et al., 2012; McDonnell et al., 2019), as well as their time in more passive caregiving based on parents’ reports of secondary caregiving time (i.e., time the child was present but not the focus of the main activity) (see Budig & Folbre, 2004). We also draw on data from the 2017–2018 Leave Module, which was administered to employed wage and salary workers (self-employed workers were not eligible) participating in the 2017 and 2018 ATUS. This module provides information on workers’ access to (and in some cases use of and frequency of use) flexible work options, including flextime and flexplace.

To form the analytic sample, we initially limited the sample to working aged (18–65) respondents who participated in the Leave Module (N = 9,426). We then selected respondents who reported having at least one “own child” (biological, adopted, or step) in the household under age 13 (N = 3,641), for whom ATUS collected data on active caregiving time. We excluded 11 cases with missing information on a school enrollment measure, resulting in a final analytic sample that included complete data for 3,630 working parents with a child under age 13 years old (1,874 mothers and 1,756 fathers). To adjust for non-response in the initial recruitment as well as other aspects of the survey design (Abraham et al., 2006), we used the Leave Module weight, LUFINLWGT (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). Given that the final set of cases were complete, missing data estimation techniques were not required. Sample means and frequencies on key characteristics appear in Appendix A of the Online Supplement.

Key Measures

Flexible work options

We measure flextime in two ways. The first is a measure of access to flextime based on parents’ responses to the question: “Do you have flexible work hours that allow you to vary or make changes in the times you begin and end work?” Responses were coded in a binary format (yes = 1, no = 0). The second taps frequency of flextime based on the question, “Can you change the times you begin and end work on a frequent basis, occasionally, or only rarely?” Parents who reported “occasionally” and “frequently” were assigned a value of “1” (1 = occasional/frequent flextime). Those who responded “never” (in response to the previous question about access) or “rarely” were assigned value of “0.” Given that these measures directly asked whether workers have the ability to set their work schedules, they clearly reflect employee-driven flexibility.

We capture flexplace using following measures. First, access to flexplace is based on respondents’ answer to the question of whether they can work at home (0 = cannot work from home, 1 = can work from home). Second, respondents were asked whether they ever work exclusively from home (0 = never work only from home, 1 = ever work a full day at home). Third, respondents were asked how frequently they work exclusively from home. Those who reported working from home exclusively at least 1 day per week were sorted into one group (1 = work a full day at home once or more per week). Those who do not or do so infrequently (i.e., less than once per week) were sorted into a secondary group and coded as “0.” All questions were asked with respect to parents’ main jobs. This measure does not clearly indicate whether the employer or employee has control, although workers were asked their specific reasons for working from home. Thus, as a follow-up analysis, we used this information to examine how our results varied when we considered whether respondents worked from home for voluntary versus involuntary reasons. Reponses of “finishing or catching up on work” or “because the job requires working at home” were coded as involuntary reasons. Reports of “coordinating work schedule with personal or family needs,” “reduce commuting time,” and “personal preferences” were considered voluntary reasons.

Active parenting time

Following the conceptual and measurement approaches of other studies using ATUS (e.g., Kalil et al. 2012; Musick et al., 2016; Negraia et al., 2018), we captured total “active parenting time” among parents with children aged 0–12 based on the sum of parents’ reports of the number of minutes spent in four caregiving domains (which ATUS collectively refers to as primary caregiving time): These four domains included basic care, play, teaching, and management. Basic care activities included the direct physical care of children, such as feeding, bathing, and physically comforting. Play included sports, arts and crafts, games, and general play. Teaching included reading, talking, helping with homework, and other educational activities that directly related to the child. Management included attending events, traveling, and planning activities on children’s behalf (see Appendix B of the online supplement for more details). Following the above-mentioned studies, we also estimated time in these four active caregiving domains separately. All measures reflect total minutes across a 24-hour day.

Other time use activities

In contrast to total active caregiving time, we also examined parents’ time in passive caregiving. This category included all time in which the child was in the presence of and the responsibility of the parent, but not the focus of the parent’s primary activity; for example, when parents are performing domestic tasks or paid work and children are present, children are in another room, or a child was co-present during a leisure activity like television watching or attending sports (Stewart & Allard, 2015). Additionally, we captured parents' time in two other modal categories of time use that parents may allocate additional time or energy to: paid work, which includes all time in which parents spent on work and work-related activities, and domestic work, which includes core housework (e.g., cleaning, tidying, laundry) and other ancillary housework activities, such as food preparation, household maintenance, and shopping.

Covariates

Guided by insights from previous studies (e.g., Carlson et al., 2021; Genadek & Hill, 2017; Kim, 2020), we controlled for a range of parental demographic and employment characteristics that may be associated with access to flexible work arrangements and parenting time. These included parents’ race (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and other race), age (continuous), education (high school or lower, some college, bachelor’s degree, advanced degree), family income (less than $25,000, $25,000–$49,999, $50,000–$74,999, $75,000–$99,999, and $100,000 or more), school enrollment status (enrolled, not enrolled, and not asked), partner employment status (employed married/cohabiting partner, unemployed married/cohabiting partner, and no cohabiting/married partner), marital status (married/unmarried), number of children (continuous), age of the youngest child (dummy coded 0–2, 3–5, 6–12), number of hours typically worked per week (continuous), work schedule (standard, evening/night shift, rotating/split/irregular shift, and other shift), occupation (management/professional, manufacturing/transportation, service/administrative, and sales), residential area (metro area vs. non-metro area), and geographic region (Northeast, Midwest, South and West). We also controlled for aspects of the timing of the time diary data collection that may shape parents’ time, including whether it was a weekend (vs. weekdays), holiday (non-holiday), and the season (spring, summer, fall, and winter).

Analytic Approaches

As an initial step, we described the prevalence of our two measures of parents’ flextime (access to flextime, frequency of flextime) and three measures of flexplace (access to flexplace, ever work exclusively at home, work exclusively from home 1 + days per week) in the full sample and subsamples of mothers and fathers, as well as parents’ average time in our eight measures of time use (Table 1). Next, we explored the bivariate associations between the five measure of parents’ flexible work and five active caregiving measures, including total time in active caregiving and time in the four active caregiving domains of basic care, play, teaching, management (Table 2). Following other studies drawing on ATUS (Carlson et al., 2021; Musick et al., 2016; Negraia et al., 2018), we used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. These multivariate results are reported in Appendix C. All models accounted for the array of covariates described above. We also followed other studies on parenting time by presenting all models separately for mothers and fathers (Kim, 2020; Lyttelton et al., 2022; Negraia et al., 2018).

Table 1.

Descriptive Characteristics of Mothers, Fathers, and Full Analytical Sample.

		Percentage/Mean (Standard Deviation)
	Mothers N = 1,874	Fathers N = 1,756	p-value	Full Sample N = 3,630
Flextime Measures
Access to flextime	54.16	60.54	***	57.25
Occasional/frequent flextime	44.40	51.08	***	47.63
Flexplace Measures
Access to flexplace	35.92	41.99	***	38.86
Ever work full day at home	18.62	21.92	**	20.22
Work from home 1+ day/week	11.58	9.40	*	10.52
Active Parenting Time (minutes)
Total active caregiving	98.84 (112.47)	68.13 (94.84)	***	83.98 (105.42)
Basic	49.97 (71.15)	28.82 (56.48)	***	39.74 (65.32)
Play	23.09 (59.74)	23.09 (57.57)		23.09 (58.69)
Teaching	12.24 (29.35)	8.06 (22.84)	***	10.21 (26.48)
Management	13.54 (36.29)	8.16 (35.56)	***	10.94 (36.04)
Other Time Use (minutes)
Passive caregiving time	353.97 (257.69)	316.75 (278.72)	***	335.97 (268.68)
Paid work time	227.64 (248.44)	281.14 (278.00)	***	253.52 (264.47)
Domestic work time	125.61 (125.1)	92.73 (122.4)	***	109.7 (124.87)

Notes: Statistical significance indicates gender differences based on t-tests and chi-square tests. Results for the full set of covariates appear in Appendix B. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

Table 2.

Bivariate Associations Between Measures of Flextime and Flexplace and Active Parenting Time.

Mean Minutes per Day Active Parenting Time (SD)
	Flextime Measures				Flexplace Measures
	Access to flextime	No access to flextime	Regular flextime	No regular flextime	Access to flexplace	No access to flexplace	Work full day home	No full day home	Work home 1+ day/wk	No work home 1+ day/wk
Panel A. Mothers
Total	105.15** (116.39)	91.37 (107.23)	109.55*** (117.39)	90.28 (107.67)	104.29 (113.65)	96.09 (111.83)	118.28*** (120.81)	94.39 (110.03)	125.49*** (123.79)	95.35 (110.46)
Basic	52.83 (72.46)	46.59 (69.46)	55.36** (73.21)	45.67 (69.19)	53.22 (74.17)	48.23 (69.38)	58.00* (76.44)	48.13 (69.77)	59.89* (80.67)	48.67 (69.73)
Play	24.43 (63.63)	21.5 (54.79)	25.79 (64.55)	20.93 (55.54)	23.06 (59.29)	23.21 (60.14)	28.27 (65.99)	21.9 (58.17)	34.7 (69.25)	21.57 (58.23)
Teaching	13.45 (31.55)	10.81 (26.45)	13.59 (31.64)	11.15 (27.34)	12.64 (29.2)	12.07 (29.5)	13.76 (31.1)	11.89 (28.93)	15.33 (35.59)	11.83 (28.42)
Management	14.45 (39.88)	12.47 (31.51)	14.81 (41.29)	12.53 (31.72)	15.37 (43.89)	12.58 (31.3)	18.25** (54.09)	12.46 (30.72)	15.57 (39.62)	13.28 (35.83)
Panel B: Fathers
Total	71.96* (95.47)	62.26 (93.63)	74.07** (95.35)	61.93 (93.96)	76.83*** (93.98)	61.65 (94.63)	86.64*** (105.53)	62.93 (90.98)	82.94* (93.87)	66.6 (94.84)
Basic	31.91** (57.66)	24.08 (54.32)	33.53*** (55.86)	23.91 (56.74)	35.95** (56.7)	23.49 (55.41)	42.34*** (67.7)	25.03 (52.31)	40.79** (61.00)	27.58 (55.87)
Play	22.87 (55.38)	23.43 (60.81)	22.97 (54.69)	23.22 (60.45)	23.1 (52.87)	23.03 (60.76)	24.05 (53.82)	22.82 (58.59)	23.39 (53.20)	23.06 (58.02)
Teaching	7.97 (22.93)	8.19 (22.71)	8.07 (23.49)	8.04 (22.15)	9.12 (23.11)	7.31 (22.65)	9.48 (25.43)	7.66 (22.05)	8.95 (22.42)	7.96 (22.89)
Management	105.15 (116.39)	91.37 (107.23)	9.51 (40.41)	6.76 (29.63)	8.65 (35.03)	7.82 (36.01)	10.78 (43.3)	7.43 (33.05)	9.82 (36.09)	7.99 (35.52)

Notes: Statistical significance estimated by T-tests comparing mean minutes between the group with flexible work arrangements and the group without them.

***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

Then, as our main models, we examined the associations between flexible work measures and parenting time (Table 3) by applying inverse probability propensity score weighting (IPW) techniques. This model helps to avoid extrapolation bias by creating covariate balance between the treated (i.e., those with values of “1” on the measure of workplace flexibility) and the untreated (those with values of “0”). It does so by weighting respondents based on their inverse probability of receiving the treatment as a function of their observable characteristics (Morgan & Winship, 2015). Inverse probability weights were calculated for each of the five binary measures of flexible work, separately for men and women. The ranges of propensity scores were compared between treatment (e.g., access to flextime) and control groups (e.g., without access to flextime). Among each group, individuals whose propensity scores that did not overlap with the other group’s propensity score range were filtered and excluded from the sample, resulting in common support between the two groups. Balancing diagnostics suggested that treatment and control groups showed adequate balance in means and standard deviation after weighting using the propensity score (Zhang et al., 2019). We also estimated different model specifications (i.e., omitting the control for work schedule), and subsamples (i.e., among only married mothers, parents with young children (0–2 years old)), considering that childcare needs may differ for these families.

Table 3.

Associations Between Parents’ Flexible Work Options and Time in Active Caregiving using Inverse Probability Weights (IPW).

	All Active Caregiving	Basic Care Activities	Play Activities	Teaching Activities	Management Activities
	β (SE)	β (SE)	β (SE)	β (SE)	β (SE)
Panel A. Mothers (n = 1,874)
Flextime Measures
Access to flextime	9.02* (4.52)	3.82 (2.95)	1.69 (2.47)	2.15 (1.37)	1.36 (1.57)
Occasional/frequent flextime	12.55** (4.52)	7.91** (2.97)	1.78 (2.45)	1.63 (1.38)	1.23 (1.59)
Flexplace Measures
Access to flexplace	−9.86 (12.70)	6.75 (11.01)	−7.45 (3.93)	−5.81 (1.81)	−3.35 (2.33)
Ever work a full day at home	19.51* (9.20)	11.37+ (6.12)	6.51 (4.99)	−1.82 (1.64)	3.46 (2.68)
Work a full day at home 1+/week	−2.97 (9.12)	−2.11 (5.54)	2.45 (4.46)	−0.82 (2.45)	−2.48 (2.15)
Panel B. Fathers (n = 1,756)
Flextime Measures
Access to flextime	−1.79 (5.01)	1.45 (3.22)	−4.13 (2.98)	−1.13 (1.23)	2.02 (1.81)
Occasional/frequent flextime	−1.69 (4.54)	1.48 (2.68)	−4.53 (2.64)	−0.81 (1.17)	2.26 (2.03)
Flexplace Measures
Access to flexplace	−5.76 (5.28)	6.07 (4.17)	−8.50** (2.62)	−1.22 (1.37)	−2.11 (1.54)
Ever work a full day at home	1.87 (6.85)	6.92 (3.97)	−5.90 (3.32)	−0.39 (1.67)	1.23 (2.82)
Work a full day at home 1+/week	7.80 (11.32)	15.25* (7.63)	−3.70 (4.93)	−1.51 (1.44)	−2.23 (1.96)

Notes: To estimate the propensity score, logistic regression models included covariates for race, age, education, income, occupation, work schedule, work hours, school enrollment, marital status, partner employment, number of children, youngest child’s age, region, metro, weekend, holiday, and seasonality. β = coefficient; SE = standard error.

***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, + p < 0.10.

As a next step, we examined the associations between our five measures of flexible work options and parents’ time in three other categories: passive caregiving, domestic work, and paid work. These models were also estimated by the OLS models (Appendix D) and the IPW models (Table 4). The results of these models provided additional insights into the patterns of results from the primary models. Specifically, should the primary models provide little or weak evidence that parents’ access to flexible work options were associated with greater active parenting time, these follow up models help illuminate whether there is an association with time in passive caregiving, which requires less focus and energy (e.g., in the case of activities like shared television watching or monitoring a child’s play), or allows parents to attend to other tasks like domestic or paid work—which are two other key activities that compete with active caregiving for parents’ time and energy. As a final step, we compared the results of models using the measures of working from home to models that instead used the binary measure for voluntary and involuntary reasons for working from home. All models were estimated using Stata v15.1 (StataCorp, 2017).

Table 4.

Associations Between Parents’ Flexible Work Options and Time in Secondary Caregiving, Domestic Activities, and Paid Work Activities Using Inverse Probability Weights (IPW).

	Secondary Parenting	Domestic Activities	Paid Work Activities
	β (SE)	β (SE)	β (SE)
Panel A. Mothers (n = 1,874)
Flextime Measures
Access to flextime	7.13 (9.58)	−1.89 (5.61)	8.20 (9.75)
Occasional/frequent flextime	4.36 (9.98)	−7.14 (5.51)	−0.12 (9.50)
Flexplace Measures
Access to flexplace	24.08* (55.15)	−33.50* (16.84)	−27.46 (25.35)
Ever work a full day at home	37.03* (22.75)	−2.00 (8.76)	−13.24 (23.25)
Work a full day at home 1+/week	47.13** (20.92)	−16.14+ (9.07)	6.59 (24.40)
Panel B. Fathers (n = 1,756)
Flextime Measures
Access to flextime	−3.68 (11.17)	−10.28 (5.81)	15.53 (10.92)
Occasional/frequent flextime	−8.19 (10.93)	−9.22 (5.39)	3.83 (10.74)
Flexplace Measures
Access to flexplace	25.62 (19.70)	−6.53 (6.67)	−16.46 (16.98)
Ever work a full day at home	49.20 (31.58)	−18.30 (7.91)	4.52 (24.23)
Work a full day at home 1+/week	63.49* (27.84)	−6.86 (13.21)	−31.80 (21.87)

Results

Descriptive Results

Table 1 reports means and frequencies for the measures of flextime and flexplace and measures of time use. Overall, 58% of the sample reported having access to flextime, and 47% had frequent flextime use. More fathers (61%) reported access to flextime than mothers (54%). This difference was also observed for the measure of occasional/frequent flextime (51% vs. 44%). A total of 39% of the sample reported they could access to flexplace (i.e., work from home). Access to flexplace was more common for fathers (43%) than mothers (36%). 20 percent of the sample reported ever working a full day at home. This figure was also larger among fathers than mothers (22% vs. 19%). 11 percent of the sample worked a full day at home at least once per week, but this was more common among mothers (12%) than fathers (9%). All gender differences were statistically significant based on the results t-test and chi-square tests.

As for time in active caregiving activities, parents spent on average nearly 84 minutes per day overall. Not surprisingly, this number was larger among mothers, who averaged around 99 minutes per day. Fathers averaged around 68 minutes. Much of the gender gap in total active time was driven by basic parenting activities, which was the largest active caregiving domain (40 minutes per day for the full sample). Mothers spent roughly 50 minutes per day in basic case activities, whereas fathers spend 29 minutes per day. Mothers’ and fathers’ time in play was similar (around 23 minutes per day). Mothers spent more time in teaching (12 vs. 8 minutes) and management (14 vs. 8 minutes). These latter categories comprised smaller shares of active caregiving time (10 and 11 minutes per day, respectively). All gender differences in active caregiving time (except play) were statistically significant, as were gender differences in which mothers spent more time secondary caregiving (353.97 vs. 316.72) and domestic work (125.61 vs. 92.73) and less time in paid work time (227.64 vs. 281.14) than fathers.

In Table 2, we present bivariate estimates among the measures of flexible work options and five measures of active caregiving time. We used t-tests to determine whether differences in time among parents with and without the particular flexible option were statistically significant. Estimates are presented separately for mothers and fathers. Among mothers, those with four of the five flexible work options (the exception being access to flexplace) spent more time in active caregiving activities overall. They also spent more time in basic care (except those with access to flextime). Mothers who ever worked a full day at home also reported more time in management. For fathers, we observed a statistically significant difference in active caregiving time for fathers with all five measures of flexible work, as well as in basic care activities (although these values were comparatively smaller than for mothers). We did not observe any significant differences in fathers’ time in play, teaching, or management by fathers’ flexible work options.

Multivariate Associations Between Flexible Work Options and Active Caregiving Time

The results of the multivariate models predicting mothers’ and fathers’ time in active caregiving based on OLS models applying IPW appear in Table 3 (results based on the OLS models without IPW are available in Appendixes C and D of the Online Supplement). The coefficients for the flexible work measures for mothers appear in Panel A. The parallel coefficients for fathers appear in Panel B.

The results in Panel A revealed that mothers with access to flextime spent, on average, almost 9 minutes more per day in active care than mothers without flextime (B = 9.02, SE = 4.52, p < .05). For mothers who varied their schedules occasionally or frequently (vs. never or rarely), these associations were larger and stronger. In particular, mothers who could frequently vary the times they start of stop work spent, on average, 13 minutes more per day in active caregiving (B = 12.55, SE = 4.52, p < .01). Most of this time was devoted to basic care activities (B = 7.91, SE = 2.97, p < .01). There were no significant associations between access to flextime and the other domains of active caregiving time. For access to flexplace, there were no significant associations with mothers’ total active caregiving time. For mothers who ever worked a full day, there was a significant association with total active caregiving time (B = 19.51, SE = 9.20, p < .05), most of which was concentrated in basic care time, although this significant association did not extend to mothers who worked from home the entire workday at least once per week.

Among fathers, the patterns of results were different. Neither measure of flextime was significantly associated with any measure of active parenting time at the minimum probability level of p < .05. Among the three flexplace measures, we observed a statistically significant association for fathers with working a full day at home and greater time in basic caregiving (B = 15.25, SE = 7.63, p < .01), but we did not find significant associations for fathers with their access to flexplace, or usage of flexplace less regularly (i.e., ever worked a full day at home). We also found one unexpected pattern: fathers’ access to flexplace was significantly associated with less time in play. We discuss the implications of this finding further below.

Associations Between Flexible Work Options and Other Time-Use Activities

Next, we examined the associations between parents’ access to flexible work options and time in passive caregiving, domestic work, and paid work. The results of these models appear in Table 4. These analyses revealed that mothers with access to flextime or usage of flextime options did not spend significantly more time in passive caregiving activities or paid or domestic work. By the same token, mothers who could work from home spent significantly more time in secondary caregiving across all three measures. Specifically, access to flexplace was associated with roughly 24 minutes per day in secondary caregiving; ever working a full day at home was associated with an average of 37 more minutes per day; and working a full day at home at least once per week was associated with around 47 minutes more of secondary caregiving per day.

Measures of flexplace were not associated with mothers’ domestic or paid work time, with one unexpected finding: mothers’ access to flexplace was negatively associated with time in domestic work. Of note, this unexpected finding was for the same dimension of flexible work as the unpredictable finding for fathers. Although the IPW models aim to compare cases that are more similar to each other and can yield less-biased estimations than those from OLS, this advantage may be reduced if there remains an unobserved covariate that was not accounted for in the propensity score models predicting access to flexplace. Such a possibility may explain the two unexpected results for access to flexplace.

As to fathers, neither measure of flextime was significantly associated with fathers’ time in secondary caregiving, domestic work, or paid work, nor were the measures of flexplace, with one notable exception: fathers who worked from home at least 1 day per week spent significantly greater time in passive caregiving (B = 63.49, SE = 27.84, p < .05). This result mirrored the pattern for fathers who worked from home at least 1 day per week and their time in basic care. This figure for fathers exceeded the estimate for mothers by about 34%.

As final steps, we explored the robustness of the results presented in Table 3 and 4 to subsamples that excluded single parents (given that ATUS underrepresented single noncustodial fathers) and parents with young children (0–2 years old). We also eliminated the covariates for work schedule (which may also reflect a form of flexible work). The pattern of results remained robust to these alternative model specifications and subsamples (results available upon request). Lastly, we estimated the associations between working from for voluntary (vs. involuntary reasons) and parents’ caregiving time. The results revealed patterns for mothers consistent with the results reported above. Thus, it appears mothers’ reports of working from home likely reflected employee-driven flexibility. For fathers, the patterns of results were less clear. Thus, extent to which the results for fathers were driven by fathers’ desires to work from home versus their need to work from home for other reasons remain less clear. At the same time, given that fathers were more likely to report involuntary reasons for working from home than mothers, our estimates of fathers’ time are likely to be conservative estimates.

Discussion

Many working parents today face intense conflicts between the work and family domains (Nomaguchi, 2009). They want to spend more time with their children (Roxburg, 2006), but face significant work demands that limit the amount of “quality” active time they can spend with their children (Prickett & Augustine, 2021; Zick & Bryant, 1996). Given the significance of parents’ time in active caregiving activities like teaching or play for the healthy development of their children, and the salience of time in these activities for parents’ perception of work-family balance (Milkie et al., 2019), it is important to identify workplace resources that might support the efforts of parents to devote more time to active caregiving. As both person-fit theories (Voydanoff, 2005) and extant research indicate, one such resource may be access to flexible work options. The extent to which different flexible work options are associated with mothers’ and fathers’ greater time in active caregiving, however, remains unclear. This study aimed to provide such knowledge using rich data from the ATUS and Leave Module.

The results of this analysis provide several insights. First, we found evidence that access to flextime was associated with higher levels of mothers’ active caregiving time, particularly basic care time, but not with fathers’ active care time. Notably, this association grew larger when mothers could vary their schedules more frequently. As previous studies found that mothers’ flextime was not associated with their parenting time (Genadek & Hill, 2017; Kim, 2020), this finding provides new support for the importance of access to flextime for mothers to meet the dual demands of work and caregiving. At the same time, the interpretation of this finding warrants some caution, as the magnitudes of the associations were rather small (ranging from 8 to 12 minutes per day). The null finding for fathers’ flextime suggests gender differences in the use of flextime, in which male workers may use flexible work arrangements to maintain their work commitment rather than managing work and family demands (Hofäcker & König, 2013).

Regarding flexplace, we found evidence that parents’ flexplace was related to greater active caregiving. For mothers, ever working a full day at home was associated with an increase in active caregiving time (about 20 minutes) and, for fathers, working a full day at home at once or more per week was associated with an increase basic care time (about 15 minutes). This latter finding parallels the findings for fathers’ time in secondary caregiving, which was also associated with working at home once or more per week. More generally, these findings are consistent with the findings of several recent studies which found a positive association between parents’ flexplace and parenting time (Carlson et al., 2021 and Lyttelton et al., 2022; Pabilonia & Vernon, 2021). Our findings have the potential to extend this literature by suggesting a significant link between working from home and time in the active caregiving time that can improve children’s development (Hsin, 2009; Phillips, 2011).

Regarding flexplace, we found a robust positive association among all three measures of flexplace and mothers’ time in passive caregiving. The magnitudes of the associations were also much larger (ranging from 24 to 63 minutes) than the associations for flextime, suggesting that flexplace has a particular importance to working parents who actively integrate work and caregiving responsibilities. These findings suggest that, for mothers, although multitasking can be emotionally taxing and reduce the quality of parents’ time in their caregiving and other activities (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000), flexplace may also be a critical strategy for mothers for “getting things done” by providing basic monitoring of children while addressing other personal and family needs (Offer & Schneider, 2011). We also found that working exclusively at home at least 1 day per week was associated with father’s time greater in passive caregiving, and thus, may help fathers support their families’ needs too. These findings also indicate that fathers who work from home less frequently may be less likely to couple it caregiving, and thus may experience fewer of the competing time demands and “downsides” of telework than mothers (Schieman & Young, 2010).

These findings point to several important questions for future research. First, how do mothers and fathers similarly or differently utilize flexplace as a strategy for addressing issues of work family conflict, and what are the implications of these strategies, both positive and negative, for various aspects of parents’ time and parenting. They also raise the question of what passive caregiving activities parents are spending more time in; for example, parents and children value many “passive” activities, like shopping or watching television together, and thus work policies that promote such time should be supported as well. Lastly, they highlight how future research should consider differences in how and why mothers versus fathers combine working from home with childcare, and how these different experiences differentially shape parental stress and emotional well-being.

Our study also had limitations. First, although we tested the robustness of our results using IPW, our results are still limited in the extent to which it allows for causal inference if unobserved characteristics of parents and/or children (e.g., extra care needs of children, intrinsic work motivation) that confound the associations between flexible work arrangements and parenting were not accounted for. Indeed, our IPW approach also produced two results (e.g., negative association between fathers’ access to flexplace and time in play and mothers’ access to flexplace and less time in domestic work) that were not supported by prior research and theory. It is possible that these findings may be a function of the absence of an important covariate in the propensity score models predicting access to flexplace. More research must be done to assess the causal impact of parents’ access to flexible work on caregiving time using longitudinal data.

Second, researchers must better disentangle the pathways (e.g., reduced time-based strain or reduced psychological strain) by which access to flexible work options versus the utilization of these options—which are distinct dimensions that can produce different associations with worker outcomes (Allen et al., 2013; McNamara et al., 2012)—are associated with more active caregiving time, as well as the specific mechanisms (e.g., reduced commute time) that explain the patterns of results. Third, as a policy matter, it is important to recognize that many employees are reticent to use flexible work options due to concerns about discrimination (Coltrane et al., 2013; Glass, 2004; Stone, 2008), and that there are barriers to implementing greater access to flexible work in many jobs like retail or manual labor, which requires workers’ physical presence in the workplace. Thus, flexible work options should be considered as part of a slate of different options (e.g., job sharing, scheduling regulations) (Jacobs & Padavic, 2015), and research should examine the associations among these different flexible practices and caregiving time as well. Next, future research should attend to other potential sources of variation, including parents’ level of education, occupation, race, and ethnic background, and ages of children, which may condition the links between flexible work options and caregiving time.

Finally, we cannot speak to whether these patterns would be similar in the current economic and public heath context, in which the COVID-19 pandemic endures, and many parents’ needs for work flexibility have increased. On one hand, studies based on the ATUS suggest that during the early stages of the pandemic, fathers did not increase their time in active caregiving, and only slightly increased their time in passive caregiving (Augustine & Prickett, 2022), even among couples where both parents worked from home (Dunatchik et al., 2021). Mothers did take on greater active caregiving time, but this shift may have been due to their unequal rate of workplace exit and reduced schedules compared to fathers (Augustine & Prickett, 2022). On the other hand, studies from Italy and Canada suggested that the gender division of household tasks and childcare become more equitable because of fathers’ increased involvement in childcare and housework (Mangiavacchi et al., 2021; Shafer et al., 2020). Given these mixed findings, further research is necessary to explore whether our findings on mothers and fathers, which are based on pre-pandemic data, would be similar or different today.

In sum, given the emphasis on “intensive” caregiving time among parents, practitioners, and scholars concerned with child development, it is important to consider how a popular, yet limited work support is associated with parents’ active caregiving time. In general, we find that access to and utilization of flextime may help mothers (but not fathers) to devote more time to active caregiving, and utilization of flexplace may help both mothers and fathers to invest more active and passive caregiving activities. These results provide fresh evidence of the benefits—and limitations—of flexible work options for caregiving that speak to and help refine policy and research on the linkages between workplace flexibility and family wellbeing.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Parents’ Access to Flexible Work Arrangements and Time in Active Caregiving Activities

Supplemental Material for Parents’ Access to Flexible Work Arrangements and Time in Active Caregiving Activities by Jennifer March Augustine, Jaeseung Kim, and Mina Lee in Journal of Family Issues

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jaeseung Kim

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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