Parental irrationality: Gender norms shape work and child care decisions

Highlights

• While parents think they are making rational financial decisions about their working arrangements and child care costs, gender norms continue to influence these decisions.
• Parents underestimate costs consistent with the idea that mothers should be caregivers and fathers, providers. They overestimate the cost of fathers reducing their full-time work to act as caregivers, but underestimate the cost of mothers reducing work. In other words, fathers reducing work hours is perceived as more expensive than mothers doing so.
• Greater awareness around child care policies and financial costs of caregiving might address gendered assumptions and provide support to enable parents to make equitable and informed decisions on child care and their division of labour.

For new parents, decisions regarding child care and working arrangements are some of the most pressing and impactful. Women have increased their participation in the labour force and their incomes, but they still seem to take a step back from full-time work for child care. Even if mothers make higher incomes than their counterparts, it is fathers who continue to work full-time.

To investigate why this happens, Regula Zimmermann analyzed 133 in-depth interviews with 54 individuals (27 couples) in Switzerland about their financial decisions before and after the birth of their first child. This setting is of interest because in Switzerland, the state offers little support for child care and parental leave is short–hence, parents need to make pressing decisions about labour and child care.

Parents make “gendered cost estimates”

Zimmermann found that parents do not know the actual costs associated with their decisions, making what she calls “gendered cost estimates.” In lieu of knowing the real costs associated with their child care or working arrangement decisions, these estimates rely on both assumptions about finances and gender norms, and may not align with real costs.

For instance, the real cost of reducing a parent’s labour requires knowing income tax rate and the cost of child care, yet parents did not mention that they knew these calculations. Instead, consistent with existing literature, almost all parents in Zimmermann’s sample described parental duties as belonging to the mother.

Another finding of her study was the perception of “gain” versus “loss” of income if mothers decided to reduce their working hours to care for children. Most parents did not view a mother’s transition to part-time work as a loss of full-time income. Instead, they compared her reduced earnings to the alternative of her not working at all. Comparatively, the reference for a father’s reduction in work was full-time work (i.e., income loss), thus reinforcing the narrative that care provided by fathers is expensive, and care provided by mothers is free.

Most parents did not view a mother’s transition to part-time work as a loss of full-time income. Instead, they compared her reduced earnings to the alternative of her not working at all.

The research showed that money did have a small effect on how parents share paid and unpaid work. The norm of fathers as the primary provider is in decline, with mothers who earn substantially more than their counterparts spending more time working outside the home, compared to women who earn less or the same as their partners. Yet, the “gendered cost estimates” undertaken by parents attributed less financial value to mothers’ paid work and child care than to fathers’ paid work and child care, even when both earned the same amount of money, or she earned more.

Informing parents through policy

This reluctance to engage with financial specifics sheds light on a social dimension of decision-making around work and child care. “Parents often avoid discussing their financial calculations, perhaps because they feel it reflects a personal failure not to have planned better,” Zimmermann noted. She described how deeply entrenched societal norms influence these decisions: “None of the parents I interviewed said, ‘It costs us $60,000 a year for a mother to stay home, but we think it’s worth it.’” Instead, they often ended up undervaluing mothers’ caregiving.

Zimmermann highlights that future policy initiatives can equip parents with accessible tools to calculate the financial implications of child care and reduced work hours. “There is no calculator which integrates taxes, child care costs, and other financial factors,” she explains, emphasizing the complexity of these decisions. “Policymakers implicitly assume that parents are informed, but this study found that none of them were aware of the costs of their work and childcare arrangements.” This lack of accessible information leaves parents to navigate decisions without a clear understanding of their long-term financial risks, such as implications for pensions and retirement, or financial vulnerability.

“Policymakers implicitly assume that parents are informed, but this study found that none of them were aware of the costs of their work and child care arrangements.”

For parents making important child care decisions, gender norms on child care and valuation of work continue to shape parental decision-making around work and child care, often under a guise of rationality. While parents believe they are making rational choices, greater education and awareness of true costs are still needed to achieve equality.

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Research brief prepared by:

Laura Lam