Anamary Maqueira Linares, University of Manitoba

Fri. Feb. 16 02:30 PM - Fri. Feb. 16 04:00 PM
Location: 3BC55

"Childcare provision and maternal time use in Ecuador"

Abstract: This paper investigates households as one of the primary sites of social reproduction. Using time-use data, I explore the relationship between institutional and non-parental childcare provision on maternal unpaid time use, using a seemingly unrelated regression approach (SUR) and taking Ecuador as a case study. Most of the literature on this topic focuses on maternal employment effects. Yet, instead, I ask how out-of-home childcare affects the amounts—and types—of time that mothers devote to active childcare, supervisory childcare, and housework and how these effects compare to those resulting from the co-residence of household members likely to assist with childcare. The paper also details the actual utilization of different types of institutional childcare in the Ecuadorian context in 2012, showing the relevance of the type and design of public and private institutional childcare. Results suggest that institutional and kinship childcare present a complementary relationship for mothers’ active unpaid care time, while female kinship is associated with significant reductions in maternal time regarding supervisory childcare and housework. The size of the effects suggests kinship care is associated with greater reduction in maternal unpaid work time overall, while out-of-home childcare is associated with greater reductions for mothers with no co-resident adult female kin. My results point toward a need for more holistic approaches when considering the social organization of care and maternal time allocation in Global South contexts.