The Impact of Parenthood on the Gender Division of Paid and Unpaid Work in China

Rui LU , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

In western societies, parenthood increases women’s time spent on unpaid work and decreases the time in paid work. Men ‘s time use is hardly impacted by parenthood. Different from west, women in China seldom reduced working hours or withdrew from the labour market after having children, not only because that many families only had one child but also there was a universal dual-earner norm that both women and men should work to contribute to the society. But the rapid development of marketing economy and the relaxation of family planning policy that allows people to have more children may further disrupt the gender balance including greater unpaid work and motherhood penalty for women. It is unclear how Chinese couples have adapted to this changing circumstance, how they divide paid and unpaid work after the birth of children, especially after the birth of the second child? This paper applies a longitudinal design using 2 waves of China labour-force dynamics survey (CLDS) in 2016 and 2018 to trace the changes of the division in paid and unpaid work after the birth of children. The preliminary results show that the first child did not decrease the share of paid work for wife, but the second child decreased the share of paid work for women largely. For the unpaid work, the birth of first child increased the share in unpaid work for women, while the birth of second child or the third child did not show large differences.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe