Conference Agenda

Our study aims to investigate to what extent the disability of a child increases the parental care burden by exploring mothers’ and fathers’ individual time spent on household and childcare activities. We also analyze how child disability shapes the household division of labor among parents, equalizing or exacerbating the gender gap. Child disability has so far been overlooked as a shaping factor of relevant household and parental dynamics. We exploit longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and apply propensity-score matching and fixed-effects linear regression analyses to estimate the role of child disability on parental care burden. We find that parents with a disabled child experience a higher care burden, especially mothers, and these households show an even more unequal division of domestic and childcare activities among parents.

In most developed countries, parents’ time spent on childcare and parenting has intensified over the past decades. However, the patterns of parenting remain unequally divided between women and men. Moreover, couples’ parenting patterns may change dynamically over the life course and relate to couple-level employment arrangement. This study uses couple-dyadic panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to investigate the cross-generational development in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting time and within-couple division of parenting during the first six years of parenthood in Germany over the past 30 years. Preliminary results show that while the gross parenting time has significantly increased for both genders over the past decades, mothers continued to share a higher proportion of parenting time than fathers. We also highlight women’s relatively lower labor supply (i.e., higher non-employment and part-time employment rates than men) as a key factor behind the rather stagnated development of gender-equal parenting division of labor in Germany. For the next step, we plan to further investigate whether the changing parenting patterns in Germany are contributed primarily by the compositional changes in women’s socioeconomic status (especially working status) or by behavioral changes in couple-level division of labor.

This study investigates the relationship between female labor force participation and child-care service availability in Italy at the provincial level, covering the years 2011-2022. As women increasingly balance professional and caregiving roles, access to quality child-care services has become essential for sustained labor market engagement. We employ panel fixed-effects and instrumental variables (IV) techniques to examine whether greater child-care availability correlates with increased female workforce participation. Leveraging historical regional differences in child-care attitudes dating back to pre-unification Italy, the IV approach helps address reverse causality. Findings reveal that improved child-care service coverage correlates with lower female inactivity rates, while factors such as gender wage gaps and unemployment negatively impact female participation. These results underscore the role of supportive social infrastructure in fostering gender equality in labor markets and provide insights for policies promoting economic inclusivity and family support systems.

This study examines the impact of widowhood on the caregiving roles of grandparents, focusing on gender differences in the provision of grandchild care. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we analyze responses from individuals aged 50 and older who transitioned from partnered to widowed status over the study period. Within-person fixed-effect regression models were employed to assess changes in caregiving frequency before and after widowhood. Preliminary findings reveal that widowhood is associated with an increase in caregiving among grandmothers, while grandfathers show no statistically significant change, and may even experience a decline in care provision. This gendered response suggests that widowhood may amplify caregiving responsibilities for grandmothers, shedding light on the complex interplay between gender, family dynamics, and caregiving.

This paper studies how the disability of a child shapes parental trust, which is fundamental to individual well-being and an important driver of civic participation. People with disabilities are widely recognized to face social capital disadvantages and have lower trust. The effects of disability can extend to family members, for example, causing severe mental and physical health consequences for parents or siblings. However, previous research has largely overlooked how having a disabled child affects parents’ trust. We postulate that Italian parents of disabled kids should exhibit higher particularized trust — toward the closer social circle — and lower interpersonal and institutional trust — toward broader society — as a consequence of feeling abandoned by institutions and having to rely on family and friends for caregiving support. A preliminary analysis confirms this pattern, seemingly revealing a gender stratification in the correlations.