Parents’ Charitable Giving and Volunteering: Are They Influenced by Their Children’s Ages and Life Transitions? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study in the United States

Abstract

Earlier cross-sectional studies have suggested that parents’ levels of charitable giving and volunteering are influenced by transitions in their children’s lives, such as the arrival of a new baby, the entry of their oldest child into elementary school, and the leaving home of their youngest child. To better investigate this contention, I used longitudinal data from the 2001-2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. When a new baby arrived, parents’ charitable giving and volunteering decreased; when the oldest child reached the age of 2, their giving increased, but not their volunteering. When the oldest child entered middle and high school, parents’ charitable giving and volunteering increased; when their youngest child left the household, parents decreased their giving and volunteering and redirected their charitable giving toward health and environmental organizations. The negative effects on volunteering were stronger for mothers, whereas the positive effects on volunteering were stronger for fathers.

Keywords

children giving level—parents volunteering level—parents longitudinal studies—giving longitudinal studies—volunteering

The arrival of a child marks a major change in a couple’s life, one that can affect all their subsequent activities, including their levels of giving charitable donations and volunteering. While children’s effect on their parents’ decision making remains profound throughout childhood and adolescence, their various transitions may influence parents’ decisions on giving and volunteering in different ways. Does having a child have a positive effect on parents’ giving and volunteering by broadening parents’ social networks, encouraging empathy, and inspiring parents to teach and model generosity for their children? Or does having a child have a negative effect on parents’ levels of giving and volunteering by placing new demands on their money and time? Alternatively, do children at certain ages cause parents to decrease their giving and volunteering to certain types of charities and increase it to others?

This article attempts to answer these questions regarding parents’ charitable giving and volunteering. Although prior studies have examined these questions, nearly all of them used cross-sectional data sets, making it impossible to tell whether any relationship between having children and engaging in charitable giving and volunteering is causal or the result of a selection effect. This article uses longitudinal data from the 2001 to 2009 waves of the Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS) module of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to study how changes in the presence, age, and life events of children affect parents’ giving and volunteering. It asks three questions:

Research Question 1: How does the presence of children of different ages in the household affect parents’ donations of time and money to nonprofit organizations?

Research Question 2: How do these effects vary by the gender of the parent?

Research Question 3: How do these effects vary by the mission of the organization?

Review of the Literature

This section first briefly reviews the literature on how becoming a parent affects people in general, and then focuses on studies that have examined the effect of children on giving and volunteering. After reviewing the literature on how men’s and women’s giving and volunteering differ, it considers how children may have different effects on the charitable activity of mothers and fathers.

Childrens’ Effects on Parents’ Personalities and Behaviors

Some literature connects the presence and age of children with parents’ civic and political participation in areas other than giving and volunteering. Parents of preschool-age children are less likely than people with no children to participate in politics, and the presence of school-age children has no significant effect on political activity (Schlozman, Burns, & Verba, 1994). Couples with children gave more person-to-person help to family members than childless couples, but were not significantly more or less likely to help nonkin (Gallagher & Gerstel, 2001).

Relationships Between the Presence of Children and Giving and Volunteering

Most prior studies have been cross-sectional, and most have found that people with children volunteer more than people without children (Rossi, 2001; Rotolo & Wilson, 2007). However, the effects found in these studies differ according to the age of the children and the marital status of their parents. Newborn babies place such high demands on their parents’ time that their overall volunteering decreases (Nesbit, 2012; Vaillancourt, 1994). As children grow older, parents begin to volunteer more (Vaillancourt, 1994), particularly for activities that their children participate in (Becker & Dhingra, 2001; Gee, 2011; Musick & Wilson, 2008; Smith, 1994). Married people with children volunteer more than single people without children, but single parents do not volunteer more than singles without children (Sundeen, 1990).

Many studies of charitable giving include number of children or family size as a control variable, but none focus specifically on having children as a determinant of the level of parents’ giving (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2012). Of the studies that include controls for children or family size, some find positive relationships between children and giving but others find nonsignificant effects (see Bekkers & Wiepking, 2012, for a summary). As these studies use different controls, different samples, and different measurements of charitable giving, it is not surprising that they yield different results. Other studies find that children have a positive effect on religious giving (Brooks, 2004; Brown & Ferris, 2007), but no effect (Brooks, 2004) or a negative effect (Brown & Ferris, 2007) on secular giving.

The studies mentioned above were all cross-sectional, so that there is no way to tell whether the higher rates of volunteering and giving among parents compared with individuals without children are the direct result of having children or a selection effect. People who become parents might be better educated, more generous, more extraverted, happier, healthier, more religious, or have broader social networks than people who do not become parents, and all of these variables correlate positively with volunteering and giving. Only through analysis of longitudinal research would it be possible to disaggregate selection effects from causal effects, but to date only five studies of the effects of having children on volunteering and giving have used longitudinal data (Eggebeen, Dew, & Knoester, 2010; Knoester & Eggebeen, 2006; Nesbit, 2012; Oesterle, Johnson & Mortimer, 2004; Rotolo, 2000).

If there is a causal relationship between having children and parents’ charitable giving and volunteering, several mechanisms may explain it. In their review of the literature on children and charitable giving, Bekkers and Wiepking (2012) speculated that parents of school-age children tend to be involved in organizations and networks related to their children, which makes them more aware of needs and more likely to be solicited. Parenting usually marks a transition from young adulthood to midlife, a stage of life associated with concerns about “generativity,” or providing for the well-being of not only one’s own children but of the next generation overall (McAdams & de St Aubin, 1998; Snarey, 1993). People with children may feel more empathy for appeals to help the needy, especially when the object of charity is children. Parents may also volunteer or donate money to model generous behavior for their children and teach them prosocial values (Wilhelm, Brown, Rooney, & Steinberg, 2008).

Gender Differences in the Effects of Children on Parents’ Giving and Volunteering

The arrival of children often affect their parents differently, and these differences are highly influenced by the gender of the parent. Having children can cause middle-class couples to intensify their specialization into caretaker and breadwinner roles, so that one partner works longer hours for more pay, while the other works less in the labor market and more at home. Specialization into roles can spread to volunteering, so that decisions about the division of child-related volunteering activities follow the same patterns as decisions about the division of household labor (Brown & Zhang, 2013). As specialization into caretaker and breadwinner roles tends to follow traditional gender stereotypes, the arrival of children may increase the volunteering of women, who usually take the caretaker role, more than the volunteering of men.

Children may also have different effects on mothers’ and fathers’ social networks. One study found that women’s social networks contract shortly after they have children, and return to their original size once their children go to school (Munch, McPherson, & Smith-Lovin, 1997). This change in social networks would tend to depress volunteering and charitable giving among parents of preschool children, and then increase giving and volunteering once children begin attending school. The same study found that having children does not change the size of men’s social networks, but does change their composition, as fathers tend to spend more time with family and less with friends (Munch et al., 1997). However, another study found that children increased social networks of both fathers and mothers (Nomaguchie & Milkie, 2003).

Compounding gender differences in the effect of having children on parents is the fact that men and women differ in their volunteering and giving behavior even in the absence of children. Studies of the causes of giving and volunteering find that, on average, women score higher on most motivations to help others, men have more of the resources of education and income, and men and women have different types of social networks, with men having stronger networks related to work and politics and women having stronger religious networks (Einolf, 2011; Wiepking & Einolf, 2012).

As charitable giving forms part of the household budget, it would be difficult to disaggregate the effect of having children on each parent’s giving, and no study has yet made the attempt. However, a number of studies have examined whether children have different effects on mothers’ and fathers’ volunteering. Vaillancourt (1994) found that having children aged 2 years and underreduced volunteering by mothers but not fathers, and having children 3 years and older increased volunteering by both parents. Musick and Wilson (2008) found that both the negative effects of young children and the positive effects of school-age children on volunteering were stronger for mothers than fathers. Brown and Zhang (2013) found that children had similar effects on mothers and fathers’ volunteering, and that each parent’s allocation of time to work and child-related volunteering was affected by the allocation of the other parent. If one parent spent more time on paid employment, his or her involvement in child-related volunteering would decrease while the other spouse’s involvement would increase. In a longitudinal study of adults who aged from their late teens to their late 20s, Oesterle and colleagues (2004) found that both men and women with preschool-age children were less likely to volunteer.

Two articles examine the effect of having children upon volunteering by fathers only. Knoester and Eggebeen (2006) used the 1987-1988 and 1992-2004 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and found that becoming a father increased men’s participation in social organizations, a category that included volunteering. A later study (Eggebeen et al., 2010), which added data from the third wave of the NSFH, found that becoming a father and time spent with children correlated with volunteering, while coresident fathers were not more likely than nonresident fathers to volunteer.

How the Effect of Children Varies by the Type of Charity

While no studies, to my knowledge, examine how having children affects giving to different types of charitable organizations, some studies examine how having children affects volunteering in different domains. Brown and Zhang (2013) found that parents of both preschool- and school-age children were more likely to do religious and youth-related secular volunteering (Brown & Zhang, 2013), but less likely than nonparents to do non-youth-related secular volunteering. Parents are more likely than nonparents to volunteer for education, community, and youth charities (Boraas, 2003; Rossi, 2001) and less likely to volunteer for arts, social services, civic, professional, political, environmental, and health groups (Boraas, 2003; Janoski & Wilson, 1995; Musick & Wilson, 2008). Mothers, but not fathers, are less likely than childless women and men to do religious volunteering (Boraas, 2003; Janoski & Wilson, 1995).

Rotolo (2000) used longitudinal data and disaggregated the results by both gender and the type of organization for which respondents volunteered. This study found that the presence of elementary school–age children, but not preschool, high school, or adult children, made it more likely that women would join religious and job-related voluntary associations, and made it more likely that both men and women would join youth-related organizations. Having preschool-age children made it more likely that both men and women would leave youth-related voluntary organizations.

In summary, previous research has found a connection between children and volunteering, with preschool children having a negative effect and school-age children having a positive effect, and with effects being larger for mothers than fathers. All but five studies (Eggebeen et al., 2010; Knoester & Eggebeen, 2006; Nesbit, 2012; Oesterle et al., 2004; Rotolo, 2000) are cross-sectional, making it impossible to rule out the possibility that selection effects explain the positive relationship between having children and helping others. These five studies look only at volunteering, and some are limited to volunteering by fathers only (Eggebeen et al., 2010; Knoester & Eggebeen, 2006) or discuss only the effect of having a baby on volunteering, not the effect of older children (Nesbit, 2012). Few studies have focused on the effects of having children on charitable giving, and those studies that included children or family size as a control variable have found inconsistent results. Most studies examine total giving or volunteering, and only a small number have disaggregated the results by the type of organization where the parent gave money (Brooks, 2004; Brown & Ferris, 2007) or volunteered (Boraas, 2003; Brown & Zhang, 2013; Janoski & Wilson, 1995; Rossi, 2001). The current study adds to the literature by providing a more rigorous longitudinal test of these earlier results, and contributes new theories and data as well.

Theory and Hypotheses

The presence of children may affect giving and volunteering in at least two ways. First, children may decrease the resources of time and money that make volunteering and charitable giving possible. Second, children may bring their parents into social networks where they are likely to be encouraged or asked to give and volunteer. PPS has good data on resources of time and money, with very accurate data on income and expenses and some data on time spent in paid employment, housework, and child care. In regard to social networks, PPS only has one question about religious attendance, and this question was only asked in two out of the five waves of the survey.

Although the lack of direct measures of social networks is a limitation, I can test the role effect of social networks indirectly by examining how children of different ages have different effects on their parents’ behavior. Children under the age of 2 place heavy demands on their parents’ resources of money and time, so one would expect giving and volunteering to decrease greatly after the arrival of a baby, and perhaps increase slightly as children get older and enter preschool (ages 2-5). As mothers spend more time caring for young children, on average, I expect the negative effect on women’s volunteering to be stronger. The negative effects of young children on volunteering should be mediated by decreases in free time, and the negative effects of young children on giving should be mediated by decreases in income and increases in household expenses. This leads to the first set of hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1a (H1a): As adults become new parents (with children aged 0-1 years), their volunteering and charitable giving will decrease.

Hypothesis 1b (H1b): The decrease in volunteering will be stronger for mothers than fathers.

Hypothesis 1c (H1c): The decrease in volunteering will be mediated by decreases in free time, and the decrease in giving will be mediated by increases in expenses and decreases in income.

Hypothesis 1d (H1d): As children age from infants (less than 2 years) to toddlers (2-5 years), parents’ volunteering and giving will increase.

As children leave preschool and enter elementary school, they make fewer demands on their parents’ resources of money and free time. Parents may be able to work more hours and pay less for child care, increasing the money available for charitable giving, with the exception of those parents who send their children to private schools. In addition, elementary school children begin to participate in sports, religious groups, youth groups, and other activities for which parents are expected to volunteer and donate money. Finally, as children grow older, parents may wish to teach them civic values and generosity by modeling volunteering and giving behaviors. All of these changes would predict an increase in giving and volunteering. As mothers tend to spend more time on children’s activities than fathers, this increase is expected to be larger for women.

Hypothesis 2a (H2a): As children enter elementary school, parents will increase their giving and volunteering.

Hypothesis 2b (H2b): Increases will be particularly strong in the types of organizations in which their children might participate (religious, youth, community, and education).

Hypothesis 2c (H2c): The increase in giving will be mediated by increases in income and the increase in volunteering will be mediated by increases in free time.

Hypothesis 2d (H2d): Positive effects on volunteering will be stronger for women.

No sudden changes occur in income, expenses, social networks, or free time as children progress from elementary school to middle and high school. Parents may slowly disengage from volunteering in children’s activities as their children grow older and more independent, but parents will still be expected to donate money to youth-related nonprofit organizations.

Hypothesis 3 (H3): As children enter middle and high school, charitable giving will not change from the preceding period (H3a) but volunteering will decrease (H3b).

When a couple’s youngest child reaches the age of 18 and leaves high school, parents will no longer be involved in social networks related to school and extracurricular activities, so that overall volunteering and charitable giving may decrease. Alternately, years of giving time and money to their children’s activities may have caused parents to take on volunteer and donor role identities (Lee, Piliavin, & Call, 1999), and these role identities may encourage them to continue giving and volunteering with other organizations. I propose these as two alternative hypotheses:

Hypothesis 4a/4b (H4a/H4b): When children leave the house, parents will either (a) decrease their giving and volunteering in all categories or (b) give less time and money to child-related groups (religious, youth, education, and community) and give more time and money to other categories of organizations.

Data and Method

Data

This study uses the PPS module of the PSID, a longitudinal study that has followed families continuously since 1968. The PPS module collected data about volunteering and charitable giving in five waves of the PSID data set, spaced every 2 years between 2001 and 2009. The PSID, following the practice it began in 1968, refers to married men and single women as “heads of household” and married women as “wives.” Data about volunteering were collected separately for the head of household and the wife, but for charitable giving it was collected for the entire household, not distinguishing between husbands’ and wives’ donations. The PSID has an exceptionally high wave-to-wave response rate, generally between 95% and 98% (McGonagle, Schoeni, Sastry, & Freedman, 2012).

The sample was not only nationally representative when first collected but also contained an oversample of African American and low-income households. The sample is weighted to compensate for attrition, and these weights were used in the descriptive statistics and most regression analyses. Because the PSID follows children as they leave home and establish their own households, the sample size tends to grow over time. The sample size of the entire PSID grew from 7,406 families and 21,400 individuals in 2001 to 8,690 families and 24,385 individuals in 2009. To separate the effect of children from the effect of changes in parental marital status, I limited the sample to people who were married in all relevant waves, and only included couples who were legally married, not those who were cohabiting.

Variables

The dependent variables in this study are volunteering and charitable giving. In 2003 and 2005, the PPS survey asked whether heads and wives volunteered and how many hours they volunteered for seven different types of organizations: health organizations, human services organizations, religious congregations and groups, groups working with senior citizens, organizations working for social change, youth groups, and any other volunteering.

In 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009, the PPS measured how much each household gave to 11 different types of groups: religious groups and congregations, combined purpose organizations (such as the United Way), human services organizations, health organizations, educational purposes, arts and culture, neighborhood and community groups, environmental organizations, international aid, youth and family services, and any other organizations. As it was not clear what types of organizations were included in the “other” category, and these types of organizations might differ between men and women, I did not include this category in the analysis.

In 2001, the PPS asked how much households gave to religious, combined purposes, human needs, health, education, and cultural organizations, but did not ask for separate estimates of the amount given to youth, community, environment, and international organizations. For these four variables, I included 2001 in the logistic analyses but could not include it in the ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, meaning that the sample size (household-years) is smaller for these variables in the OLS regressions. Table 1 contains descriptive statistics and question wordings for all of the volunteering and charitable giving variables.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Question Wordings for Dependent Variables.

Type	Percent who gave	M	SD	Range
Charitable giving
					Wording: “Did you or anyone in your family make donations . . .”
Religious	73.4	1,530	3,796	0-105,875	For religious purposes or spiritual development, for example, to a church, synagogue, mosque, TV or radio ministry? Please do not include donations to schools, hospitals, and other charities run by religious organizations.
Youth	19.7	38	180	0-2,888	To organizations that provide youth or family services, such as to scouting, boys’ and girls’ clubs, sports leagues, Big Brothers or Sisters, foster care, or family counseling?
Health	30.0	70	357	0-8,663	To health care or medical research organizations, for example, to hospitals, nursing homes, mental health facilities, cancer, heart and lung associations, or telethons?
Human services	43.6	195	649	0-24,063	To organizations that help people in need of food, shelter, or other basic necessities?
Combined services	44.3	1,650	11,454	0-92,640	To any organization that served a combination of purposes, for example, the United Way, the United Jewish Appeal, the Catholic Charities, or your local community foundation?
Education	26.1	123	906	0-28,878	To educational purposes?
Culture	10.8	226	4,560	0-5,000	To organizations that support or promote the arts, culture, or ethnic awareness, such as to a museum, theater, orchestra, public broadcasting, or ethnic cultural awareness?
Community	8.1	11	69	0-1,925	To organizations that improve neighborhoods and communities, such as to community associations or service clubs?
Environment	11.1	17	94	0-2,888	To organizations that preserve the environment, such as for conservation efforts, animal protection, or parks?
International aid	6.0	14	137	0-5,775	To organizations that provide international aid or promote world peace, such as international children’s funds, disaster relief, or human rights?
All	77.3	3,401	10,479	0-96,250	Calculated by adding together the 11 categories
Volunteering
					Wording: “How often did you volunteer at or through . . .”
Religious (husbands)	15.6	20.6	100.9	0-2,000	Your church, synagogue, or mosque, such as serving on a committee, assisting in worship, teaching, or helping others through programs organized by your place of worship? Please do not include volunteering through schools, hospitals, and other charities run by religious organizations.
Religious (wives)	18.9	24.8	103.9	0-2,000
Youth (husbands)	12.9	18.0	96.2	0-2,000	Organizations for children and youth, such as helping at school, cooking for a bake sale, coaching, or being a youth leader?
Youth (wives)	15.9	20.6	111.0	0-2,000
Health (husbands)	1.8	1.8	40.4	0-2,000	Organizations that help people in poor health, such as helping at a hospital, hospice or clinic, or raising funds to fight disease?
Health (wives)	2.4	2.7	50.5	0-2,000
Human services (husbands)	3.3	4.0	62.8	0-2,000	Organizations to help people in need, such as working at a soup kitchen, building or repairing a house, or providing other basic necessities?
Human services (wives)	3.5	1.3	16.8	0-520
Change (husbands)	2.1	1.2	15.3	0-1,460	Organizations to bring about social change, such as civic or community action, working for a political party or advocacy group?
Change (wives)	1.8	0.9	11.7	0-468
Senior (husbands)	2.3	3.0	62.2	0-2,000	Organizations for senior citizens, such as helping at a nursing home or a senior citizens center, providing emotional or social support, visiting, driving, or delivering food?
Senior (wives)	3.5	5.2	84.0	0-2,000
All (husbands)	25.9	48.4	175.9	0-2,000	Calculated by adding together the 6 categories
All (wives)	29.7	55.0	186.4	0-2,000

Note. Giving and volunteering data are reported for 2003, the first year in which questions about all categories of charitable giving were asked. All donation amounts are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2001 dollars. All figures are for married couples only. Data on volunteering were missing for some wives, so n = 4,710 husbands and n = 4,605 wives.

The primary independent variable is the entry of the oldest child into one of five age groups: Infants aged 0 to 1 year, Toddlers aged 2 to 5 years, Elementary school children aged 6 to 10 years, Middle school children aged 11 to 13 years, and Secondary school children aged 14 to 17 years. When the youngest child reached the age of 18, this transition is labeled Empty Nest. All of these variables are binary variables, valued 1 if it meets the condition and valued 0 otherwise.

In regressions of charitable giving, I first regressed giving on the child variable only, and then controlled for household income (log-transformed), child care expenses, and school expenses. Income and expenses may change when people have children or when their children grow older, so I controlled for these in the second step to see whether they mediated the relationship between children and giving.

In regressions of volunteering, I first controlled only for variables that do not change when people have children: race, age, and education. I then controlled for health, religious services attendance, time spent on paid employment, and time spent on housework, again to see whether changes in these variables mediated the relationship between children and volunteering. Table 2 lists descriptive statistics for the control variables.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics for Control Variables.

	Range	M	SD
Household income	0-962,500	82,420	79,672
Age	17-90	43.3	12.7
Child care expenses	0-43,313	574	2,154
School expenses	0-81,813	2,057	6,490
Education (wives)	2-17	13.2	2.8
Education (husbands)	0-17	13.2	3.1
Religious attendance (husbands; times per year)	0-156	33.0	38.3
Religious attendance (wives; times per year)	0-156	29.6	36.9
Hours worked (husbands; hours per week)	0-112	37.2	20.4
Hours worked (wives; hours per week)	0-112	24.3	19.5
Hours on housework (husbands; hours per week)	0-80	7.5	7.9
Hours on housework (wives; hours per week)	0-112	19.1	14.1
Race
White	0-1	62.0	NA
African American	0-1	21.0	NA
Hispanic	0-1	0.5	NA
Asian	0-1	2.1	NA
Native American	0-1	7.5	NA
Other race	0-1	1.3	NA
Refused to specify race	0-1	1.9	NA

Note. Household income, school expenses, and child care expenses are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2001 dollars. All descriptive statistics except for race are weighted and taken from the 2003 wave, n = 7,987 husbands and n = 7,760 wives.

Method

For charitable giving, I used fixed effects longitudinal regression to test how changes in the number of children in each age group affected the odds of a person making a charitable donation and the amount given. Fixed effects models cluster observations into groups and the regression equation models only the variation within each group. In this case, each group was a household, and the models examine whether the change in the age group of the oldest child correlates with a change in that household’s charitable giving. Fixed effects models exclude all variables from the model that remain constant across years, thereby mitigating the effect of spurious variables and selection bias from variables that remain constant over time. As fixed effects regression treats all years the same, regardless of time order, I deleted all years after the oldest child first reached the age for which it tested. In this way, I only compared the effect of having children in that age group with having children of a younger age, or no children.

Two examples may clarify the procedure. A couple has no children in 2000, has their first child in 2002, and another child in 2005. The child first appears as an infant in the 2003 wave, so I compare the couple’s charitable giving in 2001 with their giving in 2003, deleting the waves 2005-2009 from the data set for that analysis. In 2005, the infant is now a toddler (aged 3 years), so I compare the couple’s giving in 2005 with their giving in 2001 and 2003, deleting 2007 and 2009. In 2009, the child is now in elementary school, so I compare the couple’s giving with their giving in 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007. The second child, born in 2005, has no effect on any of these analyses.

As a second example, take another couple who have children born in 1988 and 1990, who are aged 11 and 13 years in the 2001 wave of the survey. In the 2003 wave, the dummy variable for Secondary would be equal to 1 as the oldest child enters the 14 to 17 age group. The regression analysis would compare the parents’ giving in 2003 with 2001, and I would delete the 2005-2009 waves from that analysis. In 2009, the youngest child turned 18 and left the household, so I would code the Empty Nest variable as 1 and compare giving in that year with giving in the years 2001-2007.

As the donation and volunteering variables were not normally distributed, with many people giving 0, others giving small amounts, and a few individuals making large donations, OLS regression was not suitable, and I used two other strategies. First, I transformed the variables into dummy variables, coded 0 for no giving or volunteering and 1 for any giving or volunteering, and used logistic regression. I also log-transformed the donation variables for OLS regression by taking the natural log of the original variable plus 1. I used the weighted sample for OLS regression, but Stata does not support the use of weights in fixed effects logistic regression.

With volunteering, there are only two waves of data (2003 and 2005) with detailed information, so I ran two sets of regressions. One regression equation examined those who did not volunteer in 2003 and tested how changes in the age of the oldest child affected decisions to start volunteering in 2005, and the other examined those who did volunteer in 2003 and tested how changes in the age of the oldest child affected decisions to quit volunteering in 2005. I also tested changes in the total number of children of each age group, but found that using a dummy variable for having one’s oldest child in each age group led to the most statistically significant results. For most child-related transitions, I report the effect of children on religious, youth, and overall volunteering, as I expect children to have an effect primarily on volunteering with these child-related organizations (Table 4). For the “empty nest” hypothesis, I also show the results for services for seniors, health, human services, and social change volunteering, as I hypothesize that parents may switch from child-related to other domains of volunteering when their last child turns 18.

Using logistic regressions for joining or leaving volunteering is less powerful than the fixed effects method used for the charitable giving analysis, and the presence of only two waves of data instead of five made the sample size of person-years smaller as well. Because of these differences in the sample size and the method, I would expect fewer statistically significant findings for the effect of children on volunteering regardless of whether there are differences in the size of the effect of children on volunteering and giving in reality. As a robustness check, I also ran each regression of volunteering as a linear probability (OLS) models. The results (available upon request) were identical to the logistic results, with one exception, discussed at the end of the findings section.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 presents the wording of the questions about volunteering and charitable giving, the percent of the sample who engaged in any activity, the mean amount of time and money donated, and the standard deviation of the amount donated. A little over a quarter of the husbands (25.9%) and wives (29.7%) did some volunteering in the previous year, and three quarters of the couples (77.3%) gave money to charity. The most common type of organization for volunteering was religious congregations or organizations (15.6% of husbands and 18.9% of wives), followed by youth (12.9% and 15.9%), with less than 5% of respondents participating in any of the other forms of volunteering. Religious groups were also the most common recipient of charitable donations (73.4%), followed by combined services charities (44.3%), human services (43.6%), health (30.0%), education (26.1%), and youth (19.7%), with less than 15% of households giving to the other types of charities.

A descriptive analysis of change in giving and volunteering over time shows that aggregate giving and volunteering remains fairly stable from wave to wave, but individual participation varies greatly. For example, from 2003 to 2005, total donations to charity increased by an average of US$138, with a standard deviation of US$2,363. Volunteering by husbands decreased 4.1 hr on average, with a standard deviation of 157, and volunteering by wives decreased 1.0 hr on average, with a standard deviation of 175.

The independent variables in this study are years in which the oldest child in the family transitions into a new age category. In 2003, 2.5% of married couples had their first infant, 2.4% had a new toddler, 1.9% had a new elementary school student, 2.3% a new middle school student, 2.2% a new secondary school student, and 5.2% made the transition to an empty nest. Descriptive statistics for the control variables are not discussed here, but are available in Table 2.

In cross-sectional regression analyses (full results available from the authors), children have a negative effect on giving and a positive effect on volunteering. For married couples, infants and elementary school–age children have a negative effect on overall charitable giving, while children of other ages have no significant effect. Infants have a negative effect on parents’ volunteering and school-age children have a positive effect. I mention the cross-sectional results only to show that cross-sectional analysis of the PPS data brings similar results to those of other studies using cross-sectional data. The longitudinal data in PPS allows for a stronger test of the causal effect of children on giving and volunteering, and I test all of the hypotheses with longitudinal analyses.

Hypothesis 1—Infants and toddlers

I hypothesized that people would reduce their giving and volunteering when they first became parents of infants and toddlers (H1a), but this hypothesis received only partial support. Having a new baby made it marginally significantly (p ≤ .10) less likely that parents would give to combined services charities and made them give significantly (p ≤ .05) less to youth charities. A new baby made it significantly less likely that mothers and fathers would start volunteering, and the odds ratios for quitting volunteering were positive and high, although the results were not statistically significant. For both giving and volunteering, adding controls for changes between waves in child care use, family income, hours worked, religious services attendance, and hours spent on housework had little or no significant effect on the results. To save space, I only show the results with all controls in Tables 3 and 4. The results with only minimal controls are almost identical and full results are available upon request from the authors.

Table 3.

Logistic and Fixed Effects OLS Regression of Children on Charitable Giving.

	Logit	OLS
First baby (age 0-1)
Religion	1.434	−0.254
Combined	0.523^†	−0.561
Needy	0.921	−0.041
Health	1.025	0.293
Education	0.732	−0.126
Youth	0.543	−0.496*
Community	0.24	−0.043
Environment	1.574	0.163
International	0.36	0.099
Culture	0.683	−0.077
Total	1.174	0.04
n observations	4,101	8,512
n groups	1,048	2,735
First toddler (age 2-5)
Religion	0.787	0.009
Combined	0.947	−0.218
Needy	1.495	0.339
Health	2.856**	0.570**
Education	2.027^†	0.24
Youth	2.974**	0.499**
Community	2.1	0.083
Environment	0.749	−0.117
International	3.322^†	0.229^†
Culture	0.74	−0.025
Total	1.243	0.149
n observations	4,037	8,422
n groups	1,034	2,730
First elementary school (age 6-10)
Religion	1.958*	−0.025
Combined	0.926	−0.199
Needy	1.131	0.337
Health	1.43	0.225
Education	1.209	0.225
Youth	0.952	−0.004
Community	0.802	−0.046
Environment	1.189	0.06
International	1.43	0.138
Culture	1.24	0.039
Total	0.74	0.227*
n observations	5,192	11,758
n groups	1,330	3,744
First middle school (age 11-13)
Religion	1.307	0.441**
Combined	1.308	0.074
Needy	0.908	−0.04
Health	0.977	0.099
Education	0.986	0.133
Youth	1.232	0.347^†
Community	0.973	0.075
Environment	0.808	−0.046
International	0.601	−0.027
Culture	0.557	−0.043
Total	1.427	0.416***
n observations	5,209	11,757
n groups	1,332	3,749
First secondary school (age 14-17)
Religion	0.849	−0.222
Combined	1.006	0.018
Needy	0.869	−0.107
Health	2.062**	0.538***
Education	0.717	−0.119
Youth	1.043	−0.076
Community	0.687	−0.128
Environment	1.071	−0.018
International	1.687	0.251*
Culture	1.385	0.064
Total	1.172	0.052
n observations	5,223	11,806
n groups	1,337	3,754
Empty nest (youngest turns 18)
Religion	0.660^†	−0.323**
Combined	0.839	−0.377*
Needy	0.815	−0.14
Health	1.478*	0.365**
Education	0.448***	−0.398***
Youth	0.346***	−0.690***
Community	1.143	0.051
Environment	1.752*	0.170*
International	0.788	0.042
Culture	1.011	0.046
Total	0.549**	0.04
n observations	4,943	11,326
n groups	1,270	3,715

Note. Each entry in the first column shows the odds ratio for giving money to that type of charity in logistic regression for the wave in which the oldest child reaches that age category. Each entry in the second column shows the slope of the change in amount given to that type of charity in OLS regression for the wave in which the oldest child reaches that age category. The amount given was converted to the natural log because the distribution of the charitable giving variable is not normal. Weights were used in OLS regression but not logistic regression, as Stata does not support the use of weights in fixed effects logistic regression. All results include controls for household income, child care expenses, and school expenses. To avoid comparing young couples with children with retired couples, I dropped all families in which the wife was older than 45 years for regressions of new infants and toddlers, the wife was older than 55 years for regressions of elementary and middle school students, and the wife was older than 65 years for regressions of secondary students and empty nesters. OLS = ordinary least squares.

†

p ≤ .10. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001.

Table 4.

Odds Ratios and Statistical Significance of Logistic Regression of Starting and Quitting Volunteering With Changes in the Age of the Oldest Child.

	Fathers				Mothers
	Starting	n	Quitting	n	Starting	n	Quitting	n
New baby
Religious	0.591	3,180	1.405	672	0.305^†	2,666	0.95	808
Youth	1	3,159	1.467	645	0.051**	2,622	6.54	787
Any	0.326*	2,792	1.847	1,110	0.302*	2,255	2.494	1,211
Toddler
Religious	0.679	3,949	0.937	832	0.707	3,233	0.429	964
Youth	0.453	4,019	1.465	756	0.155**	3,263	5.890**	864
Any	0.781	3,429	1.496	1,352	0.365*	2,753	0.801	1,436
Elementary
Religious	1.072	4,392	1.379	923	1.005	3,507	2.465	1,047
Youth	1.311	4,504	1.503	805	0.444**	3,623	2.689	903
Any	1.251	3,823	0.81	1,492	0.491*	3,005	2.801*	1,541
Middle
Religious	0.864	4,392	1.784	923	0.959	3,507	1.214	1,047
Youth	1.986*	4,504	0.995	805	1.780^†	3,623	0.831	903
Any	1.528	3,823	1.362	1,492	1.203	3,005	0.853	1,541
Secondary
Religious	2.324**	4,561	2.03	957	0.769	3,626	1.396	1,070
Youth	2.393**	4,692	0.437^†	818	1.774*	3,752	0.736	915
Any	1.843*	3,974	0.541	1,542	1.204	3,109	0.801	1,579
Empty nest
Religious	0.359**	4,731	1.972*	986	0.453*	3,704	1.951*	1,084
Youth	0.864	4,878	3.261**	834	1.058	3,841	1.34	918
Senior	0.997	4,882	^a	126	0.698	4,133	0.861	184
Health	1.105	5,401	^a	63	1.293	4,232	^a	113
Needy	0.289^†	5,492	1.87	198	0.583	4,417	11.364***	187
Change	2.466*	5,386	0.007**	119	0.934	4,230	9.010*	93
Any	0.623^†	4,125	1.822*	1,595	0.525*	3,182	1.338	1,598

Note. Each result shows the odds ratio of starting or quitting volunteering based on having one’s oldest child reach the age of 0 to 1 (baby), 2 to 5 (toddler), 6 to 10 (elementary school), 11 to 13 (middle school), or 14 to 17 (high school). The “empty nest” results show the odds ratio of starting or quitting volunteering after one’s youngest child turns 18. All models include controls for race, age, education, and changes between waves in child care use, family income, hours worked, religious services attendance, and hours spent on housework.

The transition perfectly predicts quitting volunteering.

†

p ≤ .10. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001.

I predicted that giving and volunteering would increase when a couple’s oldest child reached the age of 2 (H1d). This was supported for giving because parents were significantly (p ≤ .10) more likely to give to four types of charities when their oldest child became a toddler, and gave significantly more money (p ≤ .10) to three types of charities. This was not supported for volunteering, as mothers were significantly (p ≤ .05) less likely to start youth volunteering and volunteering in general when their oldest child became a toddler, and were more likely to quit youth volunteering. There were no significant effects from the presence of a firstborn toddler for fathers.

Hypothesis 2—Elementary school–age children

I hypothesized an increase in giving and volunteering when the oldest child reached the age of 6 and began attending elementary school (H2a), particularly to the religious, youth, community, and educational organizations in which children might participate (H2b). I found a significant increase in the amount given to charities overall (H2a) and a significant increase in the likelihood of giving to religious organizations (H2b). With volunteering, I found continued negative effects for mothers, who were significantly less likely to begin any volunteering or youth volunteering when their oldest child reached elementary school age. Again, there were no significant effects on fathers.

Hypothesis 3—Middle school and high school–age children

Against expectations, parents’ giving and volunteering changed when their oldest child entered middle and high school. When the oldest child reached middle school, parents gave significantly more money to all organizations, religious organizations, and youth organizations (p ≤ .10). Fathers (p ≤ .05) and mothers (p ≤ .10) were also more likely to begin youth volunteering.

Increases in participation continued as the oldest child entered high school. Families were significantly more likely to give money to health-related charities, and gave significantly higher amounts to health and international charities. Fathers were significantly more likely to begin religious, youth, and overall volunteering, and mothers were significantly more likely to begin youth volunteering than in the previous periods.

Hypothesis 4—Empty nest

I predicted that when the youngest child turned 18, parents would either decrease their giving overall (H4a), or reassign giving from religious, youth, education, and community groups to other organizations (H4b). The findings generally supported both hypotheses. When the youngest child turned 18, parents were less likely to give to nonprofits overall and to religious, education, and youth organizations, and gave significantly less money to religious, combined services, education, and youth organizations. Supporting H4b, parents were more likely to give to health and environmental charities and gave more money to these charities as well. There was no such substitution effect for volunteering, however. Fathers were significantly more likely to quit volunteering overall and to quit volunteering with religious and youth organizations, and mothers were significantly more likely to quit volunteering with religious, human service, and social change organizations. Fathers and mothers were significantly less likely to start volunteering overall and religious volunteering in particular. The only increase in the likelihood of volunteering came in the area of social change volunteering in which fathers were significantly more likely to begin volunteering. However, this change was not significant in the linear probability models done in the robustness check; few people engage in social change volunteering, so an increase of only a few fathers was enough to create a statistically significant effect.

Discussion and Conclusion

This article examined how the presence of children affect the giving and volunteering behaviors of their parents, focusing specifically on the ages of children, the gender of the parent, and the type of organization. By using longitudinal data, it was possible to analyze how the entry of a couple’s oldest child into different age groups corresponded with changes in volunteering and charitable giving, thus mitigating the problem with selection effects and spurious third variable effects that exist in most prior, correlational studies. This study is one of the first to analyze how charitable giving changes with the ages of children and the first that I know of to use longitudinal data. It adds to previous longitudinal studies of children and volunteering by dividing the ages of children into six groups, by separating the results by the gender of the parent, and by analyzing volunteering at distinct types of organizations.

I predicted that people would decrease charitable giving when they had a baby, increase when the oldest child reached the age of 2, increase again when the oldest child entered elementary school, and then decrease when children left the house. These hypotheses received partial support. Charitable giving decreased in only two categories with the arrival of a baby, but giving increased when the oldest child reached the age of 2 and continued to increase in elementary and middle school. As predicted, giving to religious, education, and youth organizations, and charitable giving decreased overall, but there were increases in non-child-related giving, specifically to health and environmental charities.

In regard to volunteering, having a new baby decreased the likelihood of starting volunteering, and having a toddler decreased the likelihood of mothers starting to volunteer. Against expectations, these negative effects continued when the oldest child reached the age of elementary school. However, when the oldest child reached middle school and high school, both parents were more likely to begin youth volunteering, and fathers were more likely to begin religious volunteering when their oldest child reached high school age. As predicted, both parents were less likely to start volunteering and more likely to quit when their youngest child reached the age of 18.

The volunteering findings replicate some of the findings of Nesbit (2012), who used the same data set to find that the birth of a baby brought significant decreases in both religious and secular volunteering. I also found similar results to two cross-sectional studies that show that parents of school-age children volunteer more than people without children (Brown & Zhang, 2013; Musick & Wilson, 2008). In the current study, the biggest changes came when the oldest child entered middle school, not elementary school. The use of only the oldest child as the marker of change in status may have effected this finding; parents with more than one child whose oldest child entered elementary school may have been busy with younger siblings who were babies or toddlers.

This study adds to the knowledge of previous studies in several areas. I found changes in parents’ giving and volunteering not only with the birth of a baby, the entry of the oldest child into elementary school, and the empty nest; I also analyzed the effects of with the oldest child’s transition to age 2 and the oldest child’s entry into middle school and high school, with the latter having significant impact. Gender effects were present but not exactly what was predicted. As expected, having young children had a stronger negative effect on mothers’ volunteering, but against expectations, having older children had a strong positive effect on fathers’ volunteering.

While I hypothesized that any negative effect of children on volunteering and giving would come in large part through the strain children put on parents’ resources of free time and money, I found that controlling for income, child care expenses, educational expenses, hours of paid labor, and time spent on housework had very negligible effect on the results. This finding does not prove that the effect of children is not mediated by changes in parents’ resources as I did not have variables for time spent on child care and for money spent on food, housing, clothing, and transportation. Future studies with more complete measures of resources may find significant mediating effects.

If it is true that changes in resources of money and time seem to have small effects on giving and volunteering, then other changes must explain why volunteering and giving increases or decreases as children reach different ages. Changes in social networks are the most likely explanation of the increase in youth volunteering when children enter middle and high school as parents are both asked to volunteer in their children’s activities and are subjected to strong social norms from other parents that encourage this volunteering. Changes in parents’ knowledge and perspective, such as increased knowledge of and empathy for the needs of children, may also explain why having school-age children increases youth volunteering.

Although the longitudinal nature of the PPS data is a major advantage, there are some limitations to the data that limit the generalizability of the results. I could not fully model how resources of time and money mediated the relationship between having children and charitable giving and volunteering, as the survey lacked variables for time spent on child care and did not include all possible child-related expenses. There were also no variables that directly measured changes in personality traits, motivations, or social networks. Most significantly, there were only two waves of data on volunteering. The fact that there were more statistically significant results with giving than with volunteering may reflect the fact that there were more waves of data, and therefore a larger total sample size. Until a study with three or more waves of volunteering data becomes available, these are unfortunately the best data yet available to researchers.

Some of the findings of this study have implications for volunteer recruitment and fund-raising. Children draw parents into volunteering as they move through middle school and high school. Youth organizations therefore should direct efforts to recruiting parents of older children, even if these parents have not volunteered in the past. Parents decrease their giving and volunteering with a new baby, but they rebound quickly, increasing their giving and father’s volunteering when their oldest child reaches the age of 2. Nonprofits do not need to wait for children to reach elementary school before they begin to solicit parents to give and volunteer.

This study confirmed much of the existing research on how children affect giving and volunteering, and it also found some surprising results. This study had direct measures of some resource variables, but did not have direct measures of social networks or motivations. Future research should use longitudinal data to examine how children change their parents’ networks and motivations, and how these changes affect giving and volunteering at children’s different ages. As the research on how children change parents is underdeveloped, there is still much to be done to understand how children affect parents’ participation in charitable giving and volunteering.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Eleanor Brown, Deborah Philbrick, and Mark Wilhelm for their help with this article.

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.

Author Biographies

Christopher J. Einolf is the director of the Center for Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University. His work focuses on altruism, charitable giving, volunteering, and human rights.

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