Asymmetries and interdependencies in time use between Italian spouses

Anna Laura Mancini, Collegio Carlo Alberto
Silvia Pasqua, University of Turin

The importance parents give to time spent with their children for their future behavioural and cognitive development deeply affected the patterns of time allocation of both working and non-working parents in all developed countries in the last decades. We compare the two existing waves of the Italian Time Use dataset (1988 and 2002) to analyze how family time allocation changed over time in a country that experienced in that period a relevant increase in female employment rate and a continuous decline in total fertility rate. Our main findings are that wife’s working decisions matter for both spouses’ childcare decisions in 2002 but not in 1988 and that fathers are much more involved in children education and in child caring activities in 2002 than in 1988.