Double advantage or disadvantage? : parental education and children's developmental stages in Italy

Abstract

How do couples with different educational backgrounds alter their child care practices according to child development stages? In order to answer, I analyse the 2002 and 2008 waves of the Italian Time Use Survey. The subsample for this paper consists of heterosexual Italian couples with at least one child from age 0 to 13 years living at home (N=19,988). I differentiate between physical care, play, and teaching which are all key activities fostering child development at various developmental stages. An education gradient characterises the child care of two parents with tertiary education, emerging for physical care during workdays as well as for physical care and play during week-ends. A developmental gradient is evident in the child care of parents with tertiary and secondary education who have greater probability to invest time in physical care and play when children are below age 5 compared to two parents with less than secondary education. In educationally heterogamous couples, the parent with higher educational attainment spends more time in primary childcare than he/she would do in an educationally homogamous partnership. Having more than one child in family brings along a trade off between play and teaching. A son increases the probability of physical care, and play. Families where mother is not employed spend slightly more time in primary child care compared to families where mothers work. If small children attend pre-school care centres, they receive no less parental child care during workdays than children who stay at home.