Intensive Mothering and Well-being: The Role of Education and Child Care Activity

Gimenez-Nadal, Jose Ignacio and Sevilla, Almudena (2016): Intensive Mothering and Well-being: The Role of Education and Child Care Activity.

Abstract

We use data from the 2012, and 2013 Well-being Module of the American Time Use Survey to understand maternal momentary well-being, and how these vary by educational attainment. We document that even after controlling for a wide set of maternal characteristics, higher educated mothers report lower levels of happiness and meaning, and higher levels of fatigue when engaging in child-related activities than mothers with lower educational attainment. Further analysis reveals that there is no education gap in momentary wellbeing among fathers and non-mothers. These findings are consistent with more educated mothers feeling the pressures from the ideology of intensive mothering, whereby mother’s continuous time and attention is understood as being crucial for child development.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Mothering. Momentary well-being. Child care. Ideology of intensive mothering. Time use
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics; D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation; D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics

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