Volume 44 - Article 26 | Pages 609–626  

Educational gradients in nonstandard work schedules among mothers and fathers in the United Kingdom

By Afshin Zilanawala

Abstract

Background: Mothers’ and fathers’ participation in nonstandard employment across children’s lives is not well understood in the United Kingdom.

Objective: The first objective is to describe the prevalence of nonstandard work schedules (e.g., evenings, weekends, nights) among employed mothers and fathers using longitudinal data. The second objective is to document the education gradient in parental nonstandard work schedules over the first decade of a child’s life.

Methods: Linear probability models predict participation in nonstandard work schedules, adjusting for demographic variables, at each survey wave by education for each parent, using the first five waves of the Millennium Cohort Study.

Results: Employed mothers with less than NVQ2 (or less than high school) were most likely to work nonstandard schedules across childhood. Among employed fathers, there was little difference in the probability of working nonstandard schedules by education. The most common type of shift for mothers (30%‒36%) and fathers (nearly 42%‒46%) was evening work. Mothers and fathers with NVQ4 or more (college degree or higher) were most likely to work regularly in the evening at all ages. Night working, the least common type of schedule, did not differ by education for both parents. Mothers and fathers with the least education were most likely to work weekend schedules at all ages.

Contribution: This article documents the pervasiveness of parental nonstandard employment, which has received little attention in the UK; finds that the education gradient in nonstandard work schedules is contingent on type of schedule; and critically incorporates information about fathers’ nonstandard schedules.

Author’s Affiliation

• Afshin Zilanawala - University of Southampton, United Kingdom EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Race/ethnic inequalities in early adolescent development in the United Kingdom and United States
Volume 40 - Article 6

Parental nonstandard work schedules during infancy and children’s BMI trajectories
Volume 37 - Article 22

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Examining the relationships between education, coresidential unions, and the fertility gap by simulating the reproductive life courses of Dutch women
Volume 52 - Article 24    | Keywords: contraception, education, fertility, GGS, life course, LISS, microsimulation, Netherlands, physiology, unions

Demographic convergence in marriage timing: Intersecting gender and educational expansion
Volume 52 - Article 14    | Keywords: age at marriage, convergence, cross-country, education, gender, union formation

Left behind single in the partnering market? Entry into cohabiting unions by women and men with low educational attainment across regions of Europe, cohorts 1960 to 1985
Volume 51 - Article 43    | Keywords: cohabitation, education, Europe, European Social Survey, event history analysis, logistic regression, marginalization, partner selection, singlehood, union formation

Is single parenthood increasingly an experience of less-educated mothers? A European comparison over five decades
Volume 51 - Article 34    | Keywords: age, children, cross-national comparison, education, Europe, family life course, inequality, single motherhood

A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11    | Keywords: age dependency, education, international migration, migration, modelling, population projection, projections