Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2015

Daily time use among married mothers

On an average day during the 2009–2013 period, married mothers working full time who had children under age 6 spent 2.1 hours caring for and helping household members. Those working part time spent an average of 2.6 hours each day on these activities, and those not employed spent 3.3 hours. Married mothers working full time whose youngest child was ages 6 to 17 spent 0.8 hours helping other household members, less than half the time spent by those with children under age 6.

More from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Young First-Time Mothers Less Likely to be Married

Fertility
Graphic | JPG | PDF |
The percentage of young first-time mothers who are married is dropping, according to Fertility of Women in the United States: 2012, a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In the early 1990s, at least half of all first births to mothers younger than age 23 occurred in marriage. Since 2005, more young mothers were cohabiting (38 percent) than were married (24 percent) at the time of their first birth. However, the majority of all women continue to have their first child within marriage.
Fertility of Women in the United States: 2012 uses data from the 2012 American Community Surveyand the 2012 Current Population Survey. The report examines women’s marital status at the time of their first births, the completed fertility of women up to age 50 and the fertility patterns of young women. Fertility patterns are shown by race, ethnicity, age, citizenship and employment status, as well as state of residence.
“In this report, we explore changes in women’s relationship status at first birth over time, as well as fertility patterns of women up to age 50,” said demographer Lindsay Monte of the Census Bureau’sFertility and Family Statistics Branch, and one of the report’s authors. “It’s important to track these changes in fertility because recent research suggests that childbearing is related to women’s rates of employment, their educational attainment and their economic well-being.”
The following are some highlights from the report on women and fertility:
·         In June 2012, 75.4 million women in the United States were age 15 to 50, of which roughly 44 million, or 59 percent, were mothers.
·         Of the 75.4 million women, 17 percent had one child, 23 percent had two children, 19 percent had three or more children, and 41 percent had not given birth to any children.
·         Roughly 5 percent of all women age 15 to 50, 4.1 million women, reported giving birth in the 12 months prior to the survey. The highest share of births were to women age 25 to 34 (52.3 percent). Only 2.3 percent of births were to women age 45 to 50. 
Other highlights:
·         The average number of children ever born has dropped from more than three children per woman in 1976 to about two children per woman in 2012.
·         More than one in five women who gave birth in the year prior to the survey reported living in someone else’s home at the time of the survey. Seventy percent of these women lived in their parents’ home.
·         The nation’s official poverty rate was 15 percent in 2012, but 48 percent of young women (younger than age 23) who gave birth in the year before the survey lived in households that were below the federal poverty line, and 28 percent were in extreme poverty (below 50 percent of the federal poverty line).
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Saturday, November 9, 2013

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Surviving the First Day : State of the World's Mothers 2013

From Save the Children:

More than 1 million babies die on the first day of life – making the birth day the most dangerous day for babies in nearly every country, rich and poor alike. This is one of the major findings of Save the Children’s 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers report. The findings indicate, as never before, that helping babies survive the first day – and the first week – of life represents the greatest remaining challenge in reducing child mortality and meeting the ambitious Millennium Development Goal of reducing 1990 child mortality rates by two- thirds by 2015.

The world has made unprecedented progress since 1990 in reducing maternal and child deaths. Working together, governments, communities, nongovernmental organizations and families have reduced the annual number of children under 5 who die each year by over 40 percent – from 12 million to 6.9 million. Progress for mothers has been even greater, with deaths declining almost 50 percent since 1990 – from 543,000 to 287,000 per year.

But we have made much less progress for the children who are the most vulnerable of all – newborns. In 2011, 3 million babies died in their first month of life. This is 43 percent of all deaths of children under age 5 worldwide. Three-quarters of those newborns died in the first week of their lives, and one-third did not survive their first day of life.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

One-Third of Fathers with Working Wives Regularly Care for Their Children

Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32 percent were a regular source of care for their children under age 15, up from 26 percent in 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Among these fathers with preschool-age children, one in five fathers was the primary caregiver, meaning their child spent more time in their care than any other type of arrangement.

The series of tables titled Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2010 showed that in a typical week, 12.2 million (61 percent) of the 20 million children under age 5 were in some type of regular child care arrangement.

As married women have increasingly moved into the labor force, fathers have become more available for child care while their wives are working.

“A recession may force families to adjust their child care arrangements, “said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau. “It can trigger unemployment or changes in work hours, thus increasing the availability of fathers to provide child care. It also can reduce available income to pay for child care outside of the home.”

The tables provide statistics on child care arrangements of preschoolers and grade-schoolers by various demographic characteristics of the employed and nonemployed mothers. They also examine the characteristics of children who care for themselves on a regular basis as well as how the cost of weekly child care varies based on selected family characteristics.

Other highlights:

In households with working moms, family members continue to serve as an important source of child care for preschoolers. In spring of 2010, 30 percent of preschoolers were regularly cared for by their grandparents, 29 percent were cared for by their fathers, and 12 percent received care from a sibling or other relative.

Preschoolers with employed black and Hispanic mothers were more likely to be cared for by their grandparents than their fathers. Twenty-nine percent of black preschoolers were cared for by their grandparents, while a quarter (22 percent) were cared for by their fathers. A third of Hispanic preschoolers were regularly taken care of by their grandparent, compared with 29 percent who received care from their fathers.

Among preschoolers of employed non-Hispanic white mothers, 30 percent were cared for by their fathers and 29 percent were cared for by their grandparents.

Of the 21 million mothers who were employed in the spring of 2010, one-third reported they paid for child care for at least one of their children.

Families with an employed mother and children younger than 15 paid an average of $138 per week for child care in 2010, up from $81 in 1985 (in constant 2010 dollars), the first year that these data were collected.

Mothers with children under age 5 were more likely to make child care payments than mothers who only had children between the ages of 5 and 14 (47 percent and 23 percent, respectively).

Families in poverty who paid for care in 2010 spent a greater proportion of their monthly income on child care than did families at or above the poverty line (40 percent compared with 7 percent).

Among all children, self-care was much more prevalent among middle school-age children than among those in elementary schools: 10 percent of ages 5 to 11 and 30 percent of ages 12 to 14 regularly cared for themselves.

This report is one of several related to children and families to have been released recently or that will be released soon by the Census Bureau, including Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2009; Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns of First-Time Mothers: 1961-2008; and Comparing Program Participation of TANF and non-TANF Families Before and During a Time of Recession.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Half of First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave

Fifty-one percent of working women who had their first birth between 2006 and 2008 received paid leave (i.e. maternity leave, sick leave, vacation) compared with 42 percent between 1996 and 2000, according to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

This finding comes from Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns of First-Time Mothers: 1961-2008 [PDF], a report that analyzes trends in women’s work experience before their first child, identifies their maternity leave arrangements before and after the birth and examines how rapidly they returned to work...

The likelihood that a mother has access to paid leave varies with age, hours worked and education. About 24 percent of women under age 22 used paid leave compared with 61 percent of women 25 and older. Full-time workers were more likely to use paid-leave benefits than part-time workers (56 percent and 21 percent, respectively). Women who have not graduated from high school are less likely to use paid maternity leave as women who have graduated from college.

Other highlights:

Women are more likely to work while pregnant than they did in the 1960s. Two-thirds (66 percent) of women who had their first birth between 2006 and 2008 worked during pregnancy, compared with 44 percent who had their first birth between 1961 and 1965.

Eight out of 10 (82 percent) working women who had their first birth between 2006 and 2008 worked within one month of their child’s birth compared with 73 percent of working women who gave birth to their first child between 1991 and 1995.

Older mothers are more likely than younger mothers to work closer to the end of their pregnancies. Sixty-seven percent of mothers 22 and older worked into the last month of their pregnancy, compared with 56 percent of mothers less than age 22.

Four out of 10 (42 percent) women received unpaid maternity leave. Both paid and unpaid maternity leave were more likely to be used after birth than before.

Twenty-two percent of first time mothers quit their jobs – 16 percent while they were pregnant and another 6 percent by 12 weeks after their child’s birth.

Women who worked during their pregnancy are more likely to return to work within three to five months compared with women who did not work before the birth of their first child.

Eight out of 10 mothers who worked during their pregnancy returned to work within a year of their child’s birth to the same employer. About seven out of 10 of these women returned to a job at the same pay, skill level and hours worked per week.

Two out of 10 mothers switched employers when returning to work. These mothers experienced greater job changes compared with mothers who returned to the same employer. One out of four was employed at a new job that had comparable pay, skill level and hours worked.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Recession employment for mothers

Employment during the 2007–2009 recession
The U.S. economy officially entered a recession in December 2007. Nonfarm employment peaked in January 2008 and then entered a period of steady decline.

Share of married-couple families with an employed mother at its lowest, 1994-2010
In 2010, the mother was employed in 65.4 percent of married-couple families with children under the age of 18—a record low for the series. The series began in 1994. The mother was employed in 67.0 percent of families with children maintained by women in which no spouse was present.

Women’s Employment During the Recovery [PDF].

Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 2.0 percent for the 12-month period ending March 2011, compared to the 1.6-percent increase for the 12-month period ending March 2010.