Gender roles and parenting practices among married and cohabiting couples: evidence from the Italian Time Use Survey

The process of union formation and, consequently, the context of childrearing have deeply changed in Italy in the last decades. The increase in non-marital cohabitation has been accompanied by an impressive spread of out-of wedlock births. The possible consequences of these changes on gender role-set within couples are quite unknown in this country. In particular, there is no clear evidence whether (and how) Italian married and unmarried parents differ in childrearing practices.
In this paper, we aim to verify whether a more egalitarian gender role-set is found among childless cohabiting couples in Italy and if persists for those who have a pre-school child, using a sample from the 2008/09 Time Use Survey. We expect that cohabiters are more egalitarian in sharing unpaid work and childcare, but we want to verify whether this is explained by the cohabitation in itself or rather by differences in individual and couple characteristics (such as labor market participation and education level). A special attention will be dedicated to fathers' role according to the kind of couple.