The quality of time dedicated to child care has potentially positive effects on children's life chances. However, the determinants of parental time allocation to child care remain largely unexplored. We assess two main explanations for differences among parents in the amount of time spent with children. The first, based on the relative resources hypothesis, links variation in time spent with children to the relative attributes (occupation, education or income) of one partner with the other. The second, derived from the social status hypothesis, suggests that variation in time spent with children can be attributed to the relative social position of the couple (i.e. higher status couples spend more time with children regardless of within-couple difference). To investigate these questions, we use a sample of parents living in a partnership with children younger than 10 years old from the 2002 to 2003 Spanish Time Use Survey (STUS) (n = 7438). We find little support for the ‘relative resources hypothesis’, although it has some explanatory power on supervisory and routine activities performed with children. Instead, consistent with the ‘social status hypothesis’, we find that time spent on child care is attributable to the social position of the couple, regardless of between-parent differences in income or education. The ‘social status hypothesis’ is especially relevant for explaining the time that parents devote to activities that have a higher potential for the development of the child's cognitive and social capabilities.

The paper examines the relationship between family formation (i.e., living with a partner and having children) and women’s occupational career in southern Europe (i.e., Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The relationship is explored by analysing the impact that different family structures and male involvement in caring activities have on women’s early occupational trajectories (i.e., remaining in the same occupational status, experiencing downward or upward mobility, or withdrawing from paid work). This research shows that male involvement in caring activities does not really push women ahead in their career, but the absolute lack of male support seems to negatively affect women’s permanence in paid work. These results apply to all southern European countries except Portugal, where the absolute absence of the partners’ support in caring activities does not seem to alter women’s determination to remain in paid work. The methodology applied consists of the estimation of multinomial logit regression models and the analysis is based on eight waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP).

Investigació financiada per l'Institut Català de les Dones (2008-2009) i pel Ministeri d'Educació i Ciència (MEC) (projects SEJ2007-62684/SOCI, CSO2008-00654/SOCI and SEJ2007-67569/SOCI)This article tests the assumption that cohabitation makes a difference in the allocation of childcare responsibilities within couples. It has often been assumed that cohabiting individuals are less likely to adhere to traditional gender ideologies than married people, because they tend to have a lower tolerance for poorly functioning relationships, to assign more value to individual freedom, and to base their relationships on egalitarian individualism, rather than on the joint utility maximisation of married couples. So far, however, most studies have focused on the determinants and consequences of being in cohabitation, and have overlooked the gender implications of this living arrangement. Here we explore whether fathers in consensual unions are more prone than fathers in marital unions to share childcare responsibilities with their female partners. We use multilevel regression models for panel data to analyse ECHP in the period between 1996 and 2001. Our sample included around 13,000 couples living in heterosexual partnerships with small children (at least one child below age 13), and yielded around 45,000 observations over this period of time in 10 Western European nations. We found weak evidence of the influence of cohabitation, relative to marriage, on gender equality, but we also discovered that the diffusion of cohabitation at the societal level is associated with a more equal allocation of child care between partners

Using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey between 2006 and 2018, we explore whether sexual orientation causes wage differences for partnered women and men in Spain. The study confirms that men in same-sex couples significantly earn less than men in opposite-sex couples, confirming our hypothesis for the “hegemonic masculinity premium.” Women in same-sex couples also outearn women in opposite-sex couples, but this effect disappears after controlling for differences in human capital characteristics. Despite the high degree of social acceptance of homosexuality in Spain, partnered gay men are not able to avoid the negative earnings effects of discrimination in the labor market.