Single-mothers’ time arrangements in Spain. Balancing work and family

Núria García-Saladrigas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Marc Ajenjo, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

This paper analyses the time-use of single-mother households compared to households with two parents. We calculate the amount of time spent in daily activities by the mother to measure the time devoted to care-giving, housework, work, personal care and leisure. Women who form single-mother families are the main family supporters, therefore they have higher employment rates. For this reason, we hypothesize that they would spend less time doing household work. The second objective is to reveal which individual level variables (employment status, level of education, civil status) are associated with the time devoted to childcare in each nuclei typology. The third objective is to estimate the time invested in children and household tasks by the other household members in order to determine whether there is more support in single-mother families compared to dual-parent families. For our analysis, we use the Spain Time Use Survey carried out in 2009-2010 which includes individual activity diaries (24 hours divided in intervals of 10 minutes) of each household member aged 10 years and above. Preliminary results confirm that single mothers have a different time allocation, spending less time on household tasks, more in remunerated work, however spend an equal amount of time on childcare.