ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on what happens to parents time when they use substitute, non-parental care for their children. Maternal workforce participation is facilitated by non-parental child care. It appears that the impact of structural change in female employment practices upon time with children has been outweighed by behavioural change in time mothers spend with children. Mothers who used care spent less time in physical activities (such as feeding and changing diapers) than did mothers who used no non-parental care. Working mothers time in domestic labour reduces by 1.2 minutes a day in association with every weekly hour of non-parental care. Non-working mothers, in contrast, do gain personal care time from the use of extra-household child care. Working mothers in the reference category appear to get no child-free recreation at all. It seems that working mothers spend any leisure time they have with their children also present.
