Increasing employment of partnered mothers: Changes in child care use”, Paper presented at Population and Society

Women’s employment has changed significantly over the 1980s and 1990s: mothers of young children are more likely to be employed and a high rate of part-time work amongst these women has resulted in a large increase in the number of women working part-time. The increased employment of partnered mothers, especially those with young children, shows that more women are finding ways of fitting work around the care of their children. This is likely to be at least partially due to the increased availability of formal child care over this period. Australian Bureau of Statistics Child Care Survey unit record files from 1984, 1993, 1996 and 1999 have been used to explore how child care patterns have changed in the 1980s and 1990s, linking those changes to the changing employment of women. As expected this analysis finds there are large difference in care arrangements according to age of youngest child and mother’s working hours. Also, it is evident that while the growth in employment has been associated with a higher use of formal child care, it has also been associated with significant growth in the use of informal care, and the sustained use of no care by families which are able to manage their child care arrangements solely within the home