When the last child moves out: Continuity and convergence in spouses housework time

Objective: To examine how mothers’ and fathers’ time allocation for housework changes during the transition to postparenthood, i.e. when the last child moves out of their family households. Background: When the last child moves out, parental households are sized back to the situation before parenthood. Mothers and fathers are released from their direct parenting roles and parental time binds. This transition creates a context in which individual and coupled time allocation are likely to be rearranged. Methods: Changes in mothers’ and fathers’ housework time and mothers’ shares of total housework time were estimated using longitudinal fixed effects regression models, using data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study (1985-2019) on 1,004 households experiencing the transition to postparenthood. Results: Mothers’ time for housework declined by 11 minutes in the years before and by further 7 minutes per day at the transition to postparenthood, whereas fathers’ time declined by 6 minutes in the year after the last child has moved out of the parental household. Mothers’ share of total housework time remained constant around 72-75 percent around postparenthood. Analyses for different groups and specific tasks revealed no variations in the gendered trajectories of housework time. In general, mothers continued to do the majority of housework despite some slight convergence. Conclusion: The transition to postparenthood contributes slightly to the life-course convergence of housework time and thus, similar to all major life-course transitions following the birth of children, tends to reduce housework inequality in couples.