DANIELA NEGRAIA

webinar link:  https://zoom.us/j/94551637016

Title: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Well-being While Parenting: Does the Gender Composition of Children Matter

Abstract: This study examines whether and, if so, how the gender composition of their children influences mother’s and father’s well-being during parenting activities. Despite that parents socialize and interact with girls and boys differently and spend different amounts of time with them, little attention has been paid to how gender composition of children may matter for parental well-being. The analyses are based on a nationally representative sample of parents from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 Well-being Module and American Time Use Survey. For both mothers and fathers, gender composition of children was not associated with different levels of positive emotions, like happiness or meaning, while parenting. However, for negative emotions, fathers reported greater stress parenting all girls and mixed-gender children (i.e., girl/s and boy/s at the same time) compared to parenting all boys. Mothers reported greater fatigue and stress parenting all girls, compared to parenting all boys. Differences in parenting activities partially explained the stress patterns, for both fathers and mothers.

Bio: Daniela Negraia is a Research Scientist/Post-doc at the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research (Germany). She obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of South Carolina (USA) in 2018. Her current work explores issues at the intersection of parenting, gender, social class and well-being across family and societal contexts. In new projects she aims to understand how the digitalization of life is affecting people’s well-being  and time-use.