Partners' Long Work Hours and Changes in New Parents' Employment Over 40 Years

This paper examines employment responses to partners' long work hours among new mothers and fathers and asks how gendered couple dynamics at the transition to parenthood have changed over four decades.

Mothers are more responsive than fathers to institutional constraints on managing demands at home, and evidence is mixed on the extent to which couple dynamics have become more egalitarian over time. The current study extends research on the incompatibility of long work hours and motherhood, drawing on a couple perspective to assess the moderating role of partners' long work hours on new parents' employment and its evolution over time.

Current Population Survey panels from 1982-2020 (N = 136,336 couple years; https://cps.ipums.org/cps/) are used to measure partners' employment and work hours shortly before and after first birth across cohorts. Fixed effect models account for confounding time-invariant characteristics of couples.

New mothers pull back from work more when their partners work long hours. Husbands' employment and work hours, by contrast, are not sensitive to partners' long work hours. Despite changes in men's involvement in housework and caregiving, results show little evidence of change over 40 years in the moderating role of partners' long hours on own employment following birth.

This is the first U.S. study to examine change in the role of long work hours in shaping couples' employment responses to parenthood. Findings shed light on couple dynamics at the transition to parenthood and document persistence in husbands' work hour patterns and associations with wives' employment.