A Mother’s Work Is Never Done?

Early accounts of the COVID-19 recession characterized it as a "she-cession." This was because it seemed to disproportionally affect women, partly due to increased child care responsibilities shouldered mostly by mothers.

But some of the greatest burden on women with children during the pandemic may have not resulted from job loss. Instead, it may have come from the need to continue working during that period. A 2022 paper published by the Brookings Institution noted that "far more mothers, and other women who are caregivers, have been stressed, frustrated, and anxious because they did not [emphasis ours] leave their jobs than have been forced to exit the workforce or cut back their hours." As the economy continues to normalize from the shock of the pandemic, what changes have we seen in terms of mothers' labor force participation?

In the new normal, mothers may be working more than ever. Figure 1 below depicts the 12-month moving average labor force participation rate (LFPR) for prime-age women with a child under 5 years of age (in solid blue line) and those without children under 5 (in solid orange line). The figure shows that the labor force participation of prime-age women with a child under 5 has been rising consistently and is significantly above its pre-COVID-19 level. As of June 2023, the 12-month moving average LFPR for prime-age women with a child under 5 was 69.3 percent, 2.0 percentage points above its February 2020 level of 67.3 percent. Notably, this is its highest level since December 1982, when data first became available. The difference versus pre-COVID-19 levels is also more pronounced compared to that of prime-age women without a child under 5, whose June 2023 LFPR rate of 79.0 percent is only 0.4 percentage points above its February 2020 level of 78.6 percent.

Figure 1 also breaks down both groups according to educational attainment. In a forthcoming article, Richmond Fed economist Andreas Hornstein and San Francisco Fed economist Marianna Kudlyak find that trends in female participation during the pandemic differ between those with college degrees and those with lower levels of education. The dotted lines show LFPRs for those with college degrees. (Blue indicates women with a child under 5; orange indicates no child.) The dashed lines show LFPRs for prime-age women with less than a bachelors' degree, with the same color scheme. The figure indicates that today's record high level of participation for women with children under 5 is being driven by college-educated women, while participation for those with lower levels of education has recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

With the rise in maternal labor force participation, are men seeing a corresponding decrease? Figure 2 below looks at the 12-month moving average LFPRs of prime-age men both with and without a child under age 5.

One notable contrast with Figure 1 is that prime-age men with a child under 5 have a higher LFPR than their childless counterparts. The LFPR for men with a child under 5 fell to a record low during the pandemic and has not fully recovered: Its June 2023 level of 94.7 percent is still 0.8 percentage points below its February 2020 level of 95.5 percent. However, labor force participation for fathers of young children appears to be following a downward trend over the sample, so the decline we've seen since the pandemic may be related to longer-run demographic factors rather than pandemic-related child care concerns. As of June, participation for prime-age men with a child under 5 is close to its trend level, represented by the five-year moving average (dashed blue line in Figure 2).

However, alternative data from the American Time Use Survey may show shifts in child care responsibilities. Figure 3 below depicts the latest ATUS data, which shows an increase in the average hours per day that fathers spend caring for a household child under age 13. In Figure 3, we see that fathers spent on average 1.24 and 1.13 hours per day caring for their child in 2021 and 2022, respectively. By comparison, over the full pre-pandemic (2003-2019) sample, fathers spent between 0.96 and 1.22 hours per day caring for and helping household children, with a median of 1.07 hours.

Meanwhile, although women continue to spend more hours caring for children than men do, we see a decline from 2021 to 2022 in the average hours per day that mothers spend caring for a household child under age 13. The average of 1.98 hours per day for women in 2022 is the lowest since 2008, though it is within its pre-pandemic (2003-2019) range of 1.93 to 2.16 hours and close to the pre-pandemic median of 2.02 hours.

However, Figure 2 indicates participation rates for fathers with young children are similar to 2017 levels and are on the rise again. Does this mean we will see a reversal in mothers' participation?

One area to watch is the impact of fading fiscal supports for child care, which may have bolstered the bounce back in maternal labor force participation after COVID-19. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March of 2021, included nearly $24 billion in provisions to state governments to help child care providers cover the costs of wages, mortgages, utilities and other needs. ARPA-related child care supports are set to end on Sept. 30 of this year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that funding from these programs have served more than 220,000 child care providers, impacting as many as 9.6 million children, with an average child care center award size of $140,000. This coming fiscal cliff may change the cost-benefit calculus for households with children in terms of how to allocate parents' time between working and child care.

Views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System.