Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The amount and timing of parents’ work hours have been linked to multiple aspects of child and family well-being. However, what is understood about these associations is highly dependent on the measurement strategy used to capture parents’ employment schedules (Lambert & Henly, 2014). In-depth studies of employer practices and qualitative research on low-income workers provide rich insights, albeit for selective samples. Alternatively, national surveys tend to include a limited number of questions about work hours, in ways that potentially smooth variation (e.g., asking individuals to provide a single estimate of their “typical” work hours or schedule).

The 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) offers an opportunity to extend this research area with detailed 7-day calendar data aligning information for parents and children (in 15 minute increments) for a nationally representative sample of households with children under age 13. In the context of a broader household survey, parents identify all of the times in the past week when each child in the household was not in parental care and provide detailed information about all care arrangements that were used. In addition, detailed information is collected about each parent or co-resident caregivers’ employment, training, and education activities (and commute times) over the course of the week.

The current study provides an illustrative example of the potential of the NSECE calendar data to offer a unique look into the daily lives of American families as they negotiate employment and care for children. A growing literature documents the challenges of nonstandard work schedules for parents of young children in terms of access to reliable, high-quality child care, especially among low-income families. Despite being over-represented in the low-wage sector where nonstandard work schedules are common, Hispanics have rarely been the focus of this research. In this paper, we use NSECE data to examine linkages between low-income (i.e., <200% federal poverty line) Hispanic parents’ employment schedules and the ECE arrangements used for their young children (0-5). We find that more than three-fourths of Hispanic children with working parents have at least one parent who works some nonstandard hours. Evening (6pm-12am) and weekend hours are particularly common. We also find that Hispanic infants, toddlers and preschoolers in non-parental care spend an average of more than 30 hours per week in ECE arrangements, and for two-thirds of these children, a substantial portion of this care occurs during nonstandard hours (i.e., evenings, overnight, early morning, and/or weekends). Interestingly, the ability to align parents’ and children’s schedules in the NSECE has revealed that children’s time in care and parents’ time at work do not overlap entirely. More specifically, children spend a non-trivial number of hours in care when parents are not working. A final phase of this analysis examines the extent to which Hispanic parents’ employment schedules predict the use of multiple ECE arrangements, the types of arrangements used (e.g., center- vs. home- based settings), and parental reports of child care problems (e.g., instability and conflicts with employment).