Tag-Team Parenting: Trends in Work Schedule Synchronization among Families with Young Children

Tag-team parenting refers to parents who work nonoverlapping or desynchronized schedules and is likely driven by parents' job demands as well as access to and preferences for nonparental childcare. Dual-earner parents with young children are more likely than other couples to work more desynchronized schedules. Yet little is known as to whether their propensity to work desynchronized schedules has changed over time given vast changes in maternal employment and the early care and education landscape over the past 30 years. Using a sample of dual-earner parents with young children from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the authors describe and decompose trends in parents' work schedule synchronization to show whether, and why, tag-team parenting has changed over time in the United States. The results suggest that tag-team parenting declined by 17 percent to 26 percent between 1997 and 2019. However, these declines were concentrated among households with greater social and economic resources. Occupational upgrading among parents, increases in household income, and increases in the availability of publicly funded early education explained the greatest proportion of the decline in desynchronized schedules. These results point to the affordability of childcare and parental employment demands as key determinants of parents' work schedule synchronization.