The Caregiving Gap: Who Feels Confident Caring for Children?

Abstract

Mothers still do more childcare per week than fathers. We call this the caregiving gap, a persistent source of gender inequality. Meanwhile, men’s involvement in care boasts wide-ranging benefits for women, men, and children. Here, we focus on one important, understudied cultural dimension that shapes men’s time spent in care: confidence. We apply unique data from The American Social Survey (n = 1061) to weigh two theoretical arguments—gender socialization and self-efficacy theory—and assess how perceived competence in caring for children of different ages varies by gender and parental status. Our results indicate a dynamic interaction of socialization and exposure to caregiving in boosting confidence in caregiving. Caregiving confidence is lowest for men without children and highest among mothers, but the gender gap in caregiving confidence narrows among those who are parents across all of our three measurements: being a parent, number of children, and co-residing with a child 5 or under or 6 to 12. Cultural shifts and policy changes are necessary to support men’s equal participation in care.