Grandparents Who Care for Children While Parents Work: Characteristics and Time Use Patterns

Grandparents have historically underpinned the functioning of families raising children, particularly through emotional support and guidance. Recently, maternal workforce participation has propelled modern grandparents into a more active role, with many regularly caring for children while parents work. This trend has important implications for female workforce participation, and for childcare, workplace and ageing policies.

To date there has been little examination of regular care provision from grandparents’ perspective. This paper addresses that knowledge gap, using the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) 2006 (N>4.000). It investigates whether grandparents who provide regular care for grandchildren while parents work differ demographically from other grandparents. It identifies which specific types of childcare activities regular grandparent carers undertake, and whether/how these compare with (a) non-regular caring grandparents; and (b) parents.  It explores relationships between regular childcare provision and grandparents’ time in other activities (including leisure, personal care and paid work), subjective time pressure and satisfaction with the way time is spent. All analyses consider gender differences.

Gender is the strongest predictor of whether or not grandparents will provide regular care while parents are at work, but age, income, education status, being married (for men) and employment status are also salient. As for mothers, a high proportion of grandmothers’ care is spent in physical, hands-on, care activities. Like fathers, more of grandfathers’ care time is spent in play or minding. Being a regular carer doubles grandfathers’ time (to about 5 hours a week) and triples grandmothers’ (to about 12 hours a week). However, grandfathers’ care composition changes most, to include a higher proportion of travel (to school or day care). Regular care provision impacts on both genders’ leisure, but only on grandmothers’ housework, personal care and sleep. It doubles the likelihood grandmothers will report being rushed or pressed for time.