The paper examines how the use of child care, the time parents spend with children, and parental wellbeing relate to parental employment. The analysis in this paper is based on Wave 1 of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children (LSAC) confidentialised unit record file. Four themes are...

Extensive small scale studies have documented that when people assume the role of assisting a person with impairments or an older person, care activities account for a significant portion of their daily routines. Nevertheless, little research has investigated the problem of measuring the time...

Early childhood is a critical time for establishing the communication and literacy skills that shape children’s subsequent academic, social and employment opportunities. Debates around the family environments that support children’s optimal development, have focused on mothers’ workforce...

It is widely believed that domestic outsourcing is booming. Many believe the growth of market services is a response to increasing time pressures arising from new responsibilities in the paid workforce, and to an inflexible sexual division of labour at home. The interpretation of the...

The concept of social exclusion has become the central organising concept in social policy research, especially in Europe. The term ‘social exclusion’ has displaced many of the terms formerly in use, such as ‘inequality’, ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’. Social exclusion is a...

The Australian Time Use Survey of 1992 provides the best time-diary data available for testing hypotheses about the allocation of husbands' and wives' time to household labor in affluent societies. Our analysis isolates effects of spouses' relative contributions to household income. One finding...

Not so long ago most industrial societies believed that the private life of families should be organised around a division of male ‘provider’ and female ‘homemaker’. The poet, Lord Alfred Tennyson, believed only this arrangement accorded with nature and reason, and declared ‘all else...

The distribution of leisure time between the sexes is contested. Becker's theory of specialisation suggests that there is an underlying gender equity in leisure, while the competing view suggests that women are now bearing a 'dual burden' as both family providers and family carers. Using...

Australians have characteristically seen themselves as a people who are unenthusiastic about hard work and more oriented toward the pursuit of leisure. It has often been suggested that the basis of this national identity as a ‘laid back and carefree people’ was the uniquely Australian...