BiB – press – parents during the corona crisis

The lockdown due to the corona pandemic had far-reaching consequences for work and family life in Germany. A new investigation into the BiB therefore investigates the question of how parents with underage children organized work and family during this time. It also examined how the lockdown affected life satisfaction and what role parents played in systemically important professions.

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Video of the press conference on July 14, 2020

Over 25 million parents and children affected

During the lockdown due to the corona pandemic, short-time working, home office and contact restrictions had a massive impact on work and family life. These restrictions affected a large part of the resident population: “In Germany alone there are currently around 14.6 million parents with 11.1 million underage children and adolescents in the household”, describes Prof. Dr. Norbert F. Schneider the order of magnitude. Parents with younger children under the age of 12 in particular faced a major challenge during this time. They often had to completely reorganize their daily work and at the same time take on all-day care and schooling at home.

Number of parents with minor children in millions (2018)
Those: Federal Statistical Office (microcensus 2018), illustration BiB

Germany in the use of home office in the middle

Before the Corona crisis, working from home was not very widespread: In 2018, only 5.3 percent of employees in Germany stated that they worked at least half of their working days at home, another 6.7 percent used the home office to a lesser extent. While employed people in the Netherlands or Scandinavia worked almost a third of their working hours in the home office, Germany was only in the middle in a European comparison. During the lockdown, many entrepreneurs and employees took the opportunity to get to know the home office as a new work model. In April 2020, 23 percent of employees mainly worked in the home office, which means that the proportion had more than quadrupled in relation to the value before the crisis.

42 percent of employees consider working from home to be possible

Before the Corona crisis, men used their home office somewhat more often than women. Occasional work from home was particularly widespread with 60 percent of teachers. Relatively often, working from home was also used in highly qualified office occupations, such as management, purchasing and sales, as well as advertising and marketing. Overall, it is true that people with a higher level of education and higher income work at home more often. In contrast, working from home is hardly suitable for services to people, for the production and sale of food, and for professions in the manufacturing sector. Overall, however, according to a self-assessment of the employees, an occasional home office would be possible for around 42 percent of the respondents.

The right to work from home must not become an obligation

Prof. Dr. Norbert F. Schneider, Director of the Federal Institute for Population Research in Wiesbaden, sees the Corona phase as a learning process for the organization of work in the future: Absence from the workplace will result. ”Jobs that can be carried out in the home office should increasingly be done from home. This makes the nationwide provision of broadband internet a prerequisite for enabling home office work in rural areas as well. The advantages of this development are a lower traffic load and a decrease in commuting, more flexibility for the compatibility of work and family and a limitation of the urbanization trend. However, the prerequisites for employees must always be taken into account. Not all of them have the ideal conditions to work from home. “The right to work from home must therefore not become an obligation,” says Prof. Dr. Norbert F. Schneider of course.

Mothers work more often in systemically important occupations than fathers

During the Corona crisis, employees in “systemically relevant” professions were particularly in the spotlight. Activities that are necessary to maintain the “critical infrastructure” – for example in the areas of health, energy generation or nutrition – were identified as being systemically relevant. A total of 3.4 million parents are currently employed in systemically important professions, most of them in health care and public administration. There is a clear difference between the sexes: More than half of all employed mothers have a systemically relevant job (52 percent), and about a third (34 percent) of the fathers.

Proportion of mothers and fathers in systemically relevant occupations
Those: Federal Statistical Office (microcensus 2018), calculation and presentation of BiB

Over a third of mothers in systemically relevant professions earn less than 1,100 euros net per month

During the lockdown phase, the dilemma often arose that the parent working in the systemically important occupation was not necessarily the higher-paid parent. Two thirds of mothers in systemically important occupations earn less income than their partners. Around 36 percent of all mothers in systemically relevant areas earn less than 1,100 euros net per month, only ten percent 2,600 euros or more. On the one hand, this is due to the widespread use of part-time employment among mothers, and on the other hand, this is also due to the respective industry: “It is remarkable that people in many systemically relevant professions earn relatively little. And women are particularly affected by this, ”explains Dr. Inga Laß from BiB.

Net income in couple families: mothers with children under the age of 12 in systemically important areas
Those: Federal Statistical Office (microcensus 2018), calculation and presentation of BiB

Corona crisis did not change the division of labor between the sexes

A look at the time used between 2018 and the lockdown phase in April 2020 clearly shows how the time spent on gainful employment has changed: For men it fell from 9.6 to 7.4 hours per day, for women from 8, 3 to 7.0 hours. These declines can be observed both among parents and among childless people. A different picture emerges when it comes to the time spent on family and housework: in the same period it rose from 6.6 to 7.9 hours per day for mothers and from 3.3 to 5.6 hours for fathers. The increase is particularly evident in the case of fathers on short-time work, who did 8.1 hours of family work during the Corona lockdown – and thus about as much as the mothers on average. It is clear from this that the gender differences in time spent on housework and family work have become smaller. Dr. Martin Bujard vom BiB concludes from this: “On the basis of the data, the thesis of a re-traditionalization in the gender-specific division of labor cannot be confirmed.”

Change in time for gainful employment and family work in 2018 and 2020 on a normal working day (average)
Those: Mannheim Corona Study 2020, weighted, illustration BiB

Parents are more burdened than childless

Almost half of the parents – and thus a significantly higher proportion than those without children – found the lockdown phase very stressful. Women reported high levels of exposure more frequently than men, and around 60 percent of single mothers reported high levels of overall exposure. The analyzes reveal impairment of mental health in a smaller proportion of parents.

The study also enables statements to be made about the degree of family satisfaction during this time. Accordingly, fathers on short-time work were most satisfied, while mothers in the same situation were significantly more dissatisfied. Conversely, mothers working from home were slightly more satisfied than fathers.

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