The higher the level of education, the greater the demands parents place on themselves when raising children these days. “Their ideals and behavioral norms show that raising children is much more intensive and resource-intensive than it used to be,” sociologist Caroline Berghammer of the University of Vienna and the Institute of Demographics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences said in a broadcast today. In a project funded by the Scientific Research Fund (FWF), she investigates how the level of education affects family life.
For the study “Families and Inequalities: Trends in Educational Differences in Family Behavior”, Berghammer and an international team compared Labor Force Survey data from several European countries since the 1970s, specifically Austria, Italy, Ireland, Great Britain , Poland, France , Germany and Norway.
According to the FWF, in addition to the higher demands on child rearing among the more educated, it also shows that they more often say they spend too little time with their children – even if it’s actually as much time as they do with peers. of low education.
Initial advantage for children
In fact, Berghammer found in her study that more educated women, who tend to work longer hours, spend more time with their children than less educated women (and tend to work fewer hours).
You may outsource a substantial part of your housework to outside contractors. For your children, this time brings an advantage.