Motherhood Penalties and Living Arrangements in China

Towards an extended resource theory of marital power: parental education and household decision-making in rural China

Existing literature on the resource theory of marital power has focused on the relative resources of spouses and overlooked the resource contributions of spouses' extended families. We propose an extended resource theory that considers how the comparative resources of a couple's natal families are directly associated with marital power, net of the comparative resources of the couple. Using data from the China Panel Family Studies, we examine how the relative education of a couple's respective parents affects the wife's decision-making power, net of the relative education of the couple. Results suggest that the higher the wife's parental education relative to her husband's parental education, the more likely she is to have the final say over household financial decisions. Our study underscores the importance of situating the study of marital power in the extended family context and highlights the significance of social origins and intergenerational exchanges for marital power.

Understanding parental preference for childcare: a cross-sectional study in Chongqing, China

This study analyzed the factors influencing childcare preference and the relationship between childcare preference and childcare service demand scale, using data collected from a questionnaire survey of 3,921 parents of infants and toddlers in Chongqing, China. The results indicate that parents with higher incomes, higher education levels, older ages, multiple infants, and dual-career living in urban areas have a stronger preference for childcare. In the shared or grandparent care model, the childcare preference is not obvious. Parents of infants tend to choose childcare institutions that provide reception services, early education, and convenience services. Higher quality environmental facilities tend to reduce the preference of parents for childcare.

Grandparental childcare and second births in China

China has low birth rates at higher parities and intensive grandparental childcare. Despite this, there has been little empirical research into the role of intergenerational support in the transition to second birth. This study examines whether grandparental childcare increases the likelihood and speed of a transition to second birth in the context of relaxations in Chinese family planning policy and whether this differs for working and non-working mothers. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (2010-2016), the association between grandparental childcare, mother's working status and second childbirth are explored using split-population survival models to distinguish between the impact on the timing of fertility and ultimate parity progression. The odds of having a second child are four times higher for those who use grandparental childcare than those that don't. Amongst those who have a second child, grandparental childcare leads to 30% lower odds of transition to second birth than those without grandparental care, each month. Grandparental childcare is also associated with maternal employment, which is itself associated with a sharp decrease in the transition to second birth. At the micro-level, grandparental childcare helps mothers continue working, which in turn defers a second birth. The results emphasise the importance of work-life balance strategies, such as grandparental care, in enabling women of childbearing age to realize their fertility intentions in combination with work.

Working from Home in Urban China during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Assemblages of Work-Family Interference

During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers globally have been forced to work from home. Empirical data from Chinese cities in the Hubei province reveal work productivity decreased among many respondents working from home in 2020, primarily due to family interference with work. Such interference stems not only from the domain of daily life but also from other family members' e-working and e-learning. Conversely, respondents' work interferes with family; thus, interference operates bi-directionally. This article proposes an analytical framework of work-family interference along three dimensions: work-daily life, work-work, work-study, and each dimension can be understood through four distinct aspects: temporality, physicality, vocality, digitality. Remote workers encounter 'assemblages of work-family interference', consisting of a heterogeneous mixture of these dimensions and aspects. Furthermore, some factors (e.g., living patterns, work culture, digital infrastructure) constrain effective work-family boundary management among urban households.

Regional Differences in Chinese Female Demand for Childcare Services of 0-3 Years: The Moderating and Mediating Effects of Family Childcare Context

There are multiple reasons to consider the use of formal childcare: parental employment, child development, fertility choices, elderly health, generational relations, etc. This study explores the relationship between regional differences (urban/rural; eastern/central/western) and demand for childcare services (quantity, price, quality) from birth to three years of age, moderated and mediated by the family childcare contexts among Chinese women. Altogether, 1770 mothers of children aged 0-3 were selected from a national survey and analyzed. There are three major findings: (1) Urban mothers show a willingness to spend on the higher monetary cost of center-based childcare compared to rural mothers, as a result of more severe work-child conflicts faced by urban women. Urban-rural gaps in individual and household income also contribute to the differences in affordability. (2) Mothers in eastern China have a more substantial need to place their infants or toddlers in nurseries before the age of three than their counterparts in central and western China, primarily due to a lack of grandparental and paternal childcare support and an expectation of higher quality programs. (3) There is no significant regional disparity in terms of care-related or education-related quality preferences. The paper proposes regional prioritized strategies and targeted services to address the "3A" problems of childcare provision.

Parity-specific motherhood penalties: Long-term impacts of childbirth on women's earnings in Japan

The issue of motherhood earnings penalty has been well-documented in many Western countries. However, only a few studies discussed how earnings penalty evolves over time and varies across different parity of birth. Moreover, related research in non-Western developed countries is scant. This study contributes to the motherhood penalty literature by examining the long-term impacts (up to 10 years after childbirth) of the first and the second birth on women's employment, work hours, wage rates, and earnings in Japan. It proposes a novel research design based on the event-study approach and fixed effects regressions to quantify the dynamic effects of motherhood resulted from two consecutive birth transitions. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (from 1993 to 2015), our results show that both the first and the second birth trigger short-term earnings penalties by causing a considerable employment slump upon pregnancy. In the long run, while women's employment rates recover, work hours and wage rates remain significantly lower than their pre-pregnancy level, leading to the long-term earnings penalty. More importantly, the long-term negative impacts of childbirth on labor supply and wage rates result mostly from women's first-time rather than the second-time birth transition in Japan. These findings imply that motherhood in Japan imposes long-term penalties on women's earnings, primarily by depressing maternal labor supply after their first-time motherhood transition.

Married Adults Coresiding with Older Parents: Implications for Paid Work and Domestic Workloads

The rise of life expectancy throughout the developed world has meant that older adults play an increasingly important role in their grown-up children's lives. We evaluate whether the intergenerational solidarity theory is useful for understanding the intergenerational transfers of time in Japan given the relatively generous welfare provision for the older adults and the fall in intergenerational coresidence. We apply seemingly unrelated regression models to data of the 2006 Japanese Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (Statistics Bureau Japan, 2006) to investigate how coresidence patterns are associated with paid and unpaid work time of adult married children. The sample contains 23,226 married couples where both husband and wife are aged 20 to 59. We find evidence of intergenerational solidarity in coresident households. We also find that "doing gender" is layered through intergenerational exchanges of support between married working-age children and their older parents. Working-age women's time use patterns are associated with coresidence arrangements and care needs of their older relatives to a much greater extent than working-age men's. The observed patterns are consistent with healthy older women supporting their daughters' careers in exchange for care when they need help themselves. For working-age men, the patterns are not very pronounced. Notably, working-age husbands without children appear to be more responsive to their older the parents' care needs, suggesting that fatherhood may be associated with solidifying gendered role performance within Japanese couples.

The curvilinear relationship between servant leadership and work-family conflict: the moderating role of age in Chinese female workers

Purpose

Building on social exchange theory and selection, optimization and compensation theory, this study aims to examine a moderated curvilinear relationship between servant leadership (SL) and work-family conflict (WFC).

Design/methodology/approach

Participants were 329 female workers recruited from a Chinese small business in the service Industry. A three-step hierarchical regression was conducted to examine the relationships among the variables and the incremental contribution of SL and age and the squared term of SL.

Findings

Study results confirmed a curvilinear relationship between SL and WFC and the moderating effect of age. When younger female employees perceived a moderate range of SL from their supervisors, they reported higher WFC compared to the low or high level of perceived SL. On the contrary, senior female employees reported a lower level of WFC when they perceived a moderate level of SL than when they perceived very low or high levels.

Originality/value

SL research has experienced a period of exponential growth in the past decade. This study advanced the field of leadership by arguing that SL perceived by female employees is curvilinearly related to WFC and the curvilinear relationship is moderated by age.

Extended gender inequality? Intergenerational coresidence and division of household labor

This study investigates the effect of coresidence with the husband's or the wife's parents on division of household labor between the couple in China. We further examine how life course, education, hukou, and the gender composition of coresiding parents moderate the relationship between intergenerational coresidence and division of household labor. Previous research on housework division has looked at nuclear families. Little is known about the effect of intergenerational coresidence on housework division. Despite rapid modernization, intergenerational coresidence remains prevalent in China as families try to adapt to the changing social and economic conditions. While patrilocal coresidence dominates in both rural and urban China, matrilocal coresidence is increasingly common in urban China. Based on panel data from the 2010, 2014, 2016, and 2018 waves of the China Family Panel Studies, fixed effects models are used to account for both observed and unobserved individual-specific confounders. Both patrilocal and matrilocal coresidence seem to widen the within-couple gender gap in housework time among urban hukou holders. Among rural hukou holders, though patrilocal coresidence is associated with reduced housework time for the wife and the couple as a whole, neither patrilocal nor matrilocal coresidence significantly influences how much time the husband spent on housework. Coresidence with the husband's or the wife's parents may exacerbate gender inequality in housework division.