The gender division of housework after the first child: a comparison among Bulgaria, France and the Netherlands

In our study, we adopt a comparative-longitudinal perspective onthe gender division of housework before and after the birth of thefirst child, exploiting thefirst two waves of the Gender andGeneration Survey and comparing three countries belonging todifferent gender and welfare regimes (i.e. Bulgaria, France and theNetherlands). Wefind that childrearing everywhere triggers a re-traditionalisation, generating a more inegalitarian gender divisionof housework, yet with interesting differences across countries.Fixed-effect regression analyses of the pooled data show thatchanges when becoming parents are less pronounced in Francewith respect to Bulgaria and the Netherlands, more pronouncedwhen she is low-educated. Moreover, when countries are analysedseparately, it emerges that it is only in the Netherlands thattraditionalisation aroundfirst childbirth is significantly lower incouples where the woman is middle- and high-educatedcompared to those where she is low-educated. Economic, culturaland institutional contexts do matter. Traditionalisation and within-couples polarisation is weaker in contexts where non-traditionalattitudes are widespread, social policies are more defamilialisingand more explicitly addressed also to men, and where part-time isnot the main reconciliation strategy, as in France