ABSTRACT
Objective
We examined whether gender disparities in time spent in childcare and housework in the years after the start of the pandemic increased, decreased, or returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Background
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents experienced increased time in unpaid labor. Many scholars argued that this increase signaled a return to traditionalism. Others suggested there was potential for greater egalitarianism. Still, others argued that parenting norms and patterns of time use were unlikely to change. We explored these three arguments.
Method
We used data from the American Time Use Survey and parents of children under 13 (n = 5247) spanning the pre-pandemic (2017–2019), early pandemic (2020), and post-onset years (2021–2024). We focused on four measures of domestic labor: general caregiving, developmental caregiving, secondary caregiving, and housework.
Results
We found support for the greater egalitarianism perspective in two domains. Gender differences in time in general childcare and housework narrowed compared to the year before the pandemic, 2019, and this shift was driven by increases in fathers’ time. Gender differences in time in secondary childcare and developmental caregiving returned to pre-pandemic levels, supporting the persistence perspective.
Implications
The results highlight the potential for structural shifts to alter gendered norms of domestic work in housework and general caregiving but also dimensions of domestic labor more resistant to change: those requiring parents to combine and manage multiple activities and more intensive types of parenting.