Table 1.
Means (SDs) for Variables for Fathers and Mothers (N = 3,165)
| Fathers | Mothers | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parenting stress (range: 1 – 4) | 2.07 | (0.68) | 2.24 | (0.65) | *** |
| Current employment status | |||||
| Not employed | 0.21 | 0.43 | *** | ||
| Employed, part-time (1 – 34 hrs/week) | 0.07 | 0.15 | *** | ||
| Employed, full-time (35 – 44 hrs/week) | 0.37 | 0.32 | *** | ||
| Employed, full-time, extended hrsa | 0.25 | n/a | |||
| Employed, overtimea | 0.10 | 0.09 | |||
| Working non-standard hours | 0.64 | 0.53 | *** | ||
| Informal work hours (0 – 40) | 6.34 | (15.48) | 2.81 | (10.27) | *** |
| Worked two or more jobs last year | 0.16 | 0.10 | *** | ||
| Job stability in the past three years | |||||
| Consistently not employed | 0.07 | 0.13 | *** | ||
| Consistently employed –one or two jobs | 0.74 | 0.70 | |||
| Worked multiple jobs | 0.18 | 0.17 | |||
| Workplace inflexibility b | |||||
| Never | 0.27 | 0.23 | |||
| Sometimes | 0.34 | 0.24 | *** | ||
| Often or always | 0.18 | 0.09 | *** | ||
| Controls: | |||||
| Age (15-53 / 15-43) | 31.05 | (7.33) | 28.46 | (6.13) | *** |
| Education | |||||
| Less than high school | 0.30 | 0.32 | |||
| High school diploma/GED | 0.35 | 0.30 | *** | ||
| Some college | 0.23 | 0.26 | *** | ||
| College degree | 0.12 | 0.13 | |||
| Race/ethnicity | |||||
| White non-Hispanic | 0.22 | 0.24 | |||
| Black non-Hispanic | 0.48 | 0.46 | |||
| Hispanic | 0.26 | 0.26 | |||
| Other | 0.04 | 0.04 | |||
| Income-to-poverty ratio (0 – 69.1) | 2.68 | (3.19) | 2.12 | (2.71) | *** |
| Chronic depression | 0.14 | 0.20 | *** | ||
| Number of children in the household (0 – 10) | 1.50 | (1.44) | 2.30 | (1.32) | *** |
| Focal child’s general health (1 – 5) | 4.46 | (0.89) | 4.49 | (0.75) | |
| Have a non-residential child | 0.60 | 0.09 | *** | ||
| Engagement with focal child (0 – 7) | 3.76 | (1.89) | 5.13 | (1.59) | *** |
| Relationship status with the other parent | |||||
| Married | 0.40 | 0.39 | ** | ||
| Cohabiting | 0.25 | 0.23 | ** | ||
| Dating | 0.06 | 0.06 | |||
| Separated/Divorced | 0.16 | 0.19 | *** | ||
| Repartnered | 0.14 | 0.13 | |||
| Quality of co-parenting (1 – 3) | 2.77 | (0.33) | 2.59 | (0.52) | *** |
a
Because fathers are more likely than mothers to spend longer time working for pay, “overtime” was defined differently for fathers (60 hours or more per week) and mothers (45 hours or more per week) with an additional category, “extended hours” (working 45 – 59 hours per week) for fathers.
b
This variable consists of four categories including “not employed”.
Differences in means between fathers and mothers are statistically significant at
*
p < .05,
**
p < .01,
***
p < .001 (two-tailed test).