Working from home during Covid-19 pandemic and changes to fertility intentions among parents
Matysiak, Anna, Osiewalska, Beata, Kurowska, Anna, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, WP(13/2022)389.
The Covid-19 pandemic and related massive spread of home based work led to substantial changes in the conditions for combining work and childbearing. On the one hand, working from home helped parents to accommodate increased childcare needs. On the other, it led to blurred boundaries between work and family life during lockdowns. We investigate how working from home was related to change in fertility intentions of mothers and fathers during the pandemic and discuss the complex mechanisms behind these relationships. With the use of unique Familydemic Survey data for Poland, we estimate multinomial logit regressions and consider a set of potential moderators. We find evidence for an overall negative relationship between home based work and fertility intentions for mothers and fathers, but we also uncover some positive moderating effects. In particular, we shed light on the unexpected moderating role of gendered division of unpaid labor from before the pandemic.