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This paper uses the 2010 General Social Survey in Time Use (Canadian time diary data, N = 1,932) to examine the gender gap in parental time allocated to childcare for families at different stages indicated by ages of children. We suggest that the general increase in fathers’ time with children matters little as long as a substantial gender gap remains. We analyse how the gender gap in weekday childcare time varies at different life stages of parenting. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is used with weighted time use averages to compare childcare time allocations of mothers and fathers from couples in which at least one person works full time. We argue that the analysis of the childcare gender gap during the week is the most indicative of changing or persistent gender roles. Our results suggest fathers allocate the most time to childcare at the youngest stages of the family. However, the differences in mean characteristics do not account for the entire gap. Gender differences, and the unexplained proportion of the differences, decrease markedly as children leave toddlerhood. The decomposition analyses suggest that market forces and family characteristics do not fully explain the gap in childcare time with the exception of the passage from toddlerhood. We suggest the fluctuating gap is consistent with childrens’ age-linked traditional gendered family role expectations. The decomposition approach contributes to our understanding of gendered division of labor in parenting by counterfactually analyzing the gap beyond the father and mother characteristic differences.
Buchanan et al. (2016) studied this question.