Do tired mothers have fewer children? The influence of mothers’ leisure and parenting practices on higher order births

Ewa Jarosz , University of Warsaw
Anna Matysiak , University of Warsaw
Beata Osiewalska , University of Warsaw (1); Cracow University of Economics (2)

There have been many studies on mothers’ time allocation and fertility, yet they were predominantly focused on work. Though very important, paid and unpaid work constitutes only a fraction of an individual’s allocation of time. We argue that leisure time is a missing piece in the work-fertility research. This study looks at mothers’ leisure time, their satisfaction with this leisure time, their overall tiredness and how these factors affects the probability of a higher order birth. The paper addresses three main research questions: does i) the amount of leisure time available to mothers, ii) subjective perception of their levels of tiredness, and iii) maternal satisfaction with the amount of leisure affect fertility? The study uses the data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey waves 1-20. We start the observation at the time of the first birth and model the time to second birth using event history models. Our main explanatory covariates are: the i) the amount of leisure and ii) satisfaction with the amount of leisure and iii) levels of tiredness reported by women in childbearing age who already have one child. The models control for respondents’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. We find that available leisure time as well as its subjective assessment have significant effects on higher order births.

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 Presented in Session 77. Timing of Fertility