Trusting men with children : understanding childcare as gendered work
Keywords: Sociology.

Over the past century, men's and women's roles have gradually converged in what is today hailed as a gender revolution. Yet, changes to the gender system have been uneven, and as a result, progress toward gender equality has stalled in recent years. Despite making inroads in male-dominated spheres, women still perform the lion's share of childcare both in their own families and as paid workers. Men's reluctance to take on an equal share of society's caregiving plays a key role in reproducing gender inequality, since this work is socially and economically devalued. However, little scholarship has focused on identifying the social processes that reduce both the supply and demand for men in childcare work. Thus far, research on this topic has involved qualitative or observational data, which lacks the ability to pinpoint causal mechanisms, such as discrimination, that contribute to men's absence from care work. Using data from a series of three nationally representative online survey experiments, I show that perceptions of men as insufficient and innately inferior caregivers may hinder the development of an egalitarian division of childcare. First, I investigate discrimination against stay-at-home fathers through a conjoint survey experiment (N=1,098) set in the context of a child custody dispute. Respondents were asked to allocate custody between a mother and father who varied in terms of their employment status, earnings, and caregiving contributions. Findings show that mothers were preferred as custodians over fathers, even when parents previously divided care evenly. Fathers who violated expectations by staying home were the least likely to be given custody, highlighting the barriers men continue to face in becoming full-time parents. Consistent with past research showing increasing public acceptance of working mothers, results from this study showed that mothers who worked full-time were not penalized in terms of custody evaluations. Additionally, I find that respondents who held essentialist beliefs on gender and caregiving were more likely to award custody to mothers over fathers. Second, I test whether male childcare workers are discriminated against in hiring using a conjoint survey experiment (N=1,000) that allows me to control for background characteristics, including an applicant's qualifications, reviews, and wages. I find that respondents were significantly less likely to hire male relative to female childcare workers, even when they were more qualified and more highly rated. A portion of this penalty is explained by the fact that male applicants were perceived as less nurturing and higher risk, especially when the child being cared for was female rather than male. Respondents who endorsed the notion of maternal instincts assigned male candidates lower nurturance ratings, and respondents who believed that men are predisposed to violence rated female candidates as less risky. Third, I evaluate whether men would be willing to participate in paid childcare work if given the opportunity. I asked male and female respondents (N=1,925) to make a series of randomized pairwise comparisons between jobs with equivalent wages. Findings show that while men were somewhat less likely to prefer jobs involving care work relative to traditionally male blue-collar jobs, their preferences were weaker than those of women, who strongly preferred female-dominated pink-collar jobs (including childcare work) over blue-collar ones. I also test two theories on the development of occupational preferences. I find that variation in men's and women's preferences can, at least partially, be attributed to differences in the types of tasks they enjoy, but also, to a greater extent, by variation in their early experiences with job-relevant tasks, such as babysitting. This research contributes to the question of whether men, like women, are discriminated against in gender incongruent roles and domains. The results show that the American public is still uncomfortable with men filling primary caregiver roles, in part because they are perceived as innately less nurturing than women. My findings are also consistent with the emergence of an egalitarian essentialist ideology, which involves increasing support for women's employment alongside stagnating support for gender equality in the home and family. One unique aspect of this project is its all-encompassing approach; I measure perceptions of male caregiving in both paid and unpaid settings and examine both the supply of and demand for men in caregiving roles. Survey experiments have been consequential to our understanding of bias against women in male domains, but until now, had not been applied to domains traditionally dominated by women. This research underscores the value of establishing conceptual dimensions and methodological tools that can be used to analyze perceptions of skill and competency in the realm of family and care work. It also highlights the importance of developing interventions that can address domestic skill gaps early on and promote men's integration into spheres historically restricted to women. Care work remains underprioritized, undercompensated, and undervalued. By deepening our understanding of the gendered dimensions of caregiving, this project takes an important step toward rectifying these imbalances