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Women's work and infant care in the Philippines
Sot. Sri. Med. Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 297-304, 1993 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
0277-9536193 $6.00+ 0.00 Copyright Q 1993Pergamon Press Ltd
WOMEN’S WORK AND INFANT THE PHILIPPINES
CARE IN
REBECCAMILES DOAN’ and BARRY M. POPKIN* ‘Research Sociologist, Institute for Health and human Services Research, Florida State University, 2035 E. Dirai Drive, Innovation Park, Tallahassee, FL 32310, U.S.A. and 2Professor of Nutrition and Fellow, Carolina Population Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Abstract-Using data from a survey of 3000 Filipino infants and mothers, we analyze the implications of having more than one preschooler on several work outcomes, as well as the effect of availability of substitute care givers. The work outcomes of interest are those thought to be least compatible with infant care: work outside the home, wage work remunerated on a time basis, and long working hours. Our findings suggest that having multiple preschoolers only makes a difference for mothers whose household income is below the median: it increases their likelihood of working outside the home. Grandmothers and paid helpers consistently increase the likelihood of the various work outcomes and increase hours worked. Our findings suggest that urban residence, an indicator of work opportunity structure, increases the likelihood of wage-time work and is associated with longer working hours. Key worcis-child
care, women’s work, job compatibility, Philippines
INTRODUCTION
Proportions of women in the official labor force statistics and in informal employment positions have been rising in the Third World. Increasingly women, like men, are becoming involved in work that takes them away from home for long hours and has a rigid regime. Strategies women have traditionally relied on to balance their productive and reproductive rolessuch as working at home, coming home to feed children or taking them to work-may not work when jobs are far from home, schedules are rigid and hours longer [l-4]. This change in the nature of women’s work has led to an interest among child survival researchers in understanding to what extent and under what circumstances productive and maternal roles may interfere with or constrain each other [S]. It has also led to a concern that families will face increasing child care difficulties as extended family households become less common, urbanization increases, and job opportunities become less compatible with child care. As a result, child health may be adversely affected. One aspect of this problem that has received little attention is to what extent and under what circumstances having preschool children influences the mother’s employment. Having preschoolers to care for is usually thought of as a constraint on paid employment for the mother, particularly if she has more than one [6]. However there is some evidence that women in resource-poor households may be impelled to work for pay to meet the needs of their young children. One study showed that mothers who were bringing in income were more able to provide the energy- and protein-dense food important to *a4
36,~-1
the growth of children who had passed the age of weaning [7]. The extent to which preschoolers are a constraint on maternal employment depends in large part on the availability of substitute child care. A number of studies have looked at this issue in the United States [6,8], but little is known about the work and child care dynamics in a developing country context. A six-country comparative study carried out by the Overseas Education Fund found that the majority of low-income women used substitute child care givers from within their own households [9]. Grandmothers, other female relatives, and older siblings were reported most often as the preferred alternative care givers [9]. Some institutional child care services have been established in most countries but use is very low. In the absence of alternative child care, a mother from a resource-poor household may be impelled to take low paid work in the home, or may have to leave her child or children unattended while she works [7]. The effect of preschoolers on the mother’s employment is also likely to depend in part on the nature of her work. Some employment situations allow the mother to combine her productive and child care roles. An early study described such jobs as ones in which “the participant is not obliged to be far from home; the tasks are relatively monotonous and do not require rapt concentrations; and the work is not dangerous, can be performed in spite of interruptions, and is easily resumed once interrupted” [lo, P. 31. Modem-sector jobs however, tend to be incompatible with child care as do many work situations that require the mother to be away from home. The availability of substitute child care is therefore likely to be more crucial for mothers of preschoolers who 291
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REBECCA MILES DOAN and BARRY M. POPKIN
work outside the home and in modern-sector jobs in particular, than for self-employed mothers or mothers who work at home. In this study, we take advantage of the rich empirical detail available in a survey of a 12-month birth cohort of about 3000 Filipino infants and their mothers, to explore the relationship between mother’s work and need for care (the number of preschoolers she has). Since all the mothers in the cohort have at least one infant we cannot compare them to mothers without small children. Rather, our interest is in the difference between mothers with one preschool child and those with several. In the first part of this study, we draw on a framework developed by Leibowitz et al. [ll] and examine the extent to which the mother’s need for care influences two work situations generally thought to be incompatible with child care: paid work outside the home and wage work paid on a time basis. In the analysis we include measures of the availability of substitute care givers as well as the mother’s work experience to reflect her attachment to the work force, and her household’s income (excluding her own) to indicate economic necessity. Urban/rural residence is included to account for differences in work opportunity structures. In addition. we take into account mother’s education. Increasing levels of female education have been associated with higher levels of female labor force participation in many parts of the world and in particular with more participation in professional jobs. This is also true in the Philippines. Based on 1978-80 data, one study compared daughters to their mothers and found rising educational levels, a later age at marriage, and a greater likelihood of entering the labor force and holding a professional job [12]. Another study found that women with no schooling had the lowest labor force participation; 60% of the elementary-through-college-educated were in the labor force and 90% of those with a college education and above. Education also made white collar jobs more likely [13]. In the second part of the study, we examine the extent to which these same factors influence the amount of time working mothers spend in paid work, whether at home or outside the home. Part-time work is one strategy mothers use worldwide to balance maternal and productive roles [14]. We include in the analysis two characteristics of work situations that affect child care: the flexibility of work regimes and the location of work. DATA AND METHODS
Surcey design The study site embraced the City of Cebu and surrounding rural areas of the central Philippines island of Cebu. It included Cebu city, coastal towns, a number of villages in mountainous and coastal areas, and residential areas on smaller islands. A
stratified
single-stage sampling procedure was used to select a random sample of 33 barangays (17 urban and 16 rural) for the final sample. Households were surveyed to collect data on all births between 1 May 1983, and 30 April 1984. Baseline pregnancy surveys were obtained for 3327 women who gave birth during that 12-month period. For this analysis of women’s work and infant care, the sample consisted of the 3080 women, having single live births, for whom baseline and birth information are available.
Survey instruments Information on households, mothers, and infants was collected through three types of surveys described in detail elsewhere [15-181. These include (1) a baseline survey of socioeconomic, employment, household composition, health and dietary variables collected at the beginning (6th month of pregnancy) and then repeated at the 12th and 24th month after birth of the index child; (2) a birth history survey of delivery-related infant health and anthropometric data; and (3) a longitudinal survey providing prospective information on dietary intake, morbidity, and infant growth, along with selected individual and household variables collected at 2-month intervals. In this study, we use the data collected at 12 months postpartum since these included the earliest detailed information about occupation needed for this analysis: work type and status, and income and earnings derived from farm activities and all other family enterprises as well as wage labor paid on a per hour or per piece basis. We also use the general work information gathered at 12 months postpartum through the longitudinal survey instrument. The infant care data we use are also from the 12-month postpartum longitudinal survey. They include extensive information on who within the household fed, bathed, and watched the infant in the previous 24 hr and how much time was spent. Measurement Table 1 describes the variables used in the analysis. WKAWAY and WAGETIME are the two dependent variables examined in the first part of the study. In the survey, respondents were asked to report any paid work (either informal or formal) or unpaid work in a family enterprise that took place in the week prior to the survey. Unfortunately, the data do not allow us to look at what portion of the day the mother worked nor whether work was regular and continuous or irregular. We used the question about whether the mother was paid on a time or a piece basis to distinguish wage labor from self-employment. The self-employed category includes those women reporting themselves as such as well as 250 pieceworkers. Pieceworkers are not truly self-employed since they depend on a particular supplier for their work [19]. However, they have more in common with the self-employed than
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299
Table 1. Descriotion of variables Variables
Description
Work
WKAWAY paid work takes place outside the home (outside the home = 1) WAGETIME work is remunerated through wages paid on a time basis (wagetimer = I) HRSWRK no. of hours person worked for pay during week preceding the survey Need for care
CHILDLT6
no. of mother’s children under age 6
Availability of substitute care givers
GRANDMA OTHFEM OTHAD CHILDGT6 HELPER
indicates presence of grandmother in household (present = 1) no. of female adult relatives over age 13 residing in household no. of other adult relatives in household no. of mother’s children over age 6 presence of paid helper in household; in the Philippines, often a distant cousin from family’s place of origin (present = 1)
Preferences and rt-sources
EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR
level of education achieved: 0 = no schooling; 1 = finished elementary; 2 = finished secondary; 3 = some post secondary no. of years mother worked before becoming pregnant with index child household income excluding mother’s earnings
Urban/ruralresidence
URBAN
household is in urban or rural barangay (urban = 1)
Constraints associated with the work situation
WORKSTAT categorical variable: mother is wage-time worker , self-employed, or unpaid family worker OCCUP occupation (lists available from authors) work located within a 5-min walk from home (within = 1) WITHIN
with wage workers so have been grouped for the purposes of this study. The main independent variables of interest are need for care and the availability of substitute care givers. Need for care is measured as the number of the mother’s children who are under age 6 (CHILDLT6). We adopt conservative measures of availability of substitute care givers and include only family members residing in the same household as the mother. Others have pointed out the difficulty of measuring true availability of social support from within the household: often such assistance does not materialize until the need arises, thereby making it a part of the decision rather than a determinant of it
WI. We address the issue of differential availability and quality of care by entering each type of substitute care giver separately. The spouse as a potential care giver was dropped from the analysis because his presence had no influence on work situation or hours worked. This is consistent with the findings of other studies indicating that spouses seldom make much of a contribution to infant care [21,22]. The lack of significance may also be because there is not enough variation in this population. Virtually all the mothers live with a spouse. Indicators of the mother’s preferences and resources were also included in the model (see Table 1) as well as whether she lived in an urban or a rural area; her residence is an indicator of the work opportunity structure she faces. The classification of barangays (equivalent to neighbourhoods in the urban context and villages in the rural context) into urban and rural in this study differs somewhat from that used by the Census Bureau of the Philippines. We consider barangays separated from the core of Cebu City by large stretches of open lands rural rather than urban [23]. In the second part of the study we analyzed only those mothers who were working at 12 months
postpartum. The dependent variable was the number of hours the mother worked during the week preceding the survey (HRSWRK). In addition to the care giver availability and background variables included in the first part of the study, in the analysis of hours worked we also included two characteristics of the work situation itself that may influence the number of hours worked: the relative flexibility of the work regime and the location of the job relative to the woman’s home. As mentioned earlier, we categorized work situations according to the method of remuneration (WORKSTAT): wage workers paid on a time basis, self-employed workers (including those paid by the piece) and unpaid family workers. These work situations differ in the degree of flexibility they offer. Self-employment is more flexible than wage work because of the greater autonomy self-employed workers enjoy. Wage-earning jobs, typically in the modem sector, tend to have more rigid work regimes and longer hours; mothers holding such jobs have little opportunity to reduce their hours to accommodate child care needs. Unpaid family workers have the greatest flexibility. Whether or not the job is near home also influences a mother’s opportunity to work part-time. Mothers who work near home have greater flexibility, confirmed by mothers’ reports of whether or not they can come home to feed their children (data not shown). Analysis
We used a logistic regression procedure for the models explaining WKAWAY and WAGETIME, both of which are dichotomous variables. Since the interaction term between INCOTHR and CHILDLT6 was significant, a more parsimonious version of the model was run separately for mothers from households whose income was below the
REBECCA MILES DOAN and BARRY
300
median and those from households with income above the median. For the regressions involving HRSWRK, a general linear model regression procedure was used that handles models with both continuous and categorical independent variables. For this portion of the analysis, those who worked at home were considered separately from those who worked outside the home because joint production was common for women working at home. Survey responses indicated that the latter had difficulty separating out those hours they spent on child care and those spent at work since the two were often carried out simultaneously.
M. POPKIN
Table 2. Percentage distribution of mothers by urban/rural residence, extended-family living, and nature of work Urban
Rural
54% 46% (2186)
73% 27% (698)
25% 65% ($Z)
10% 85% 00 (14:)
41% 59% (900) 49% 51% (530)
42% 58% (320) 41% 59% (187)
Household structure
Nuclear Extended N Work stam
Wage-timers Self-employed Unpaid family workers N Location
ofwork
At home Outside the home N Within 5-min walk Not within 5-min walk N
RESULTS
The results of this study indicate that contrary to what is generally assumed, there is a higher percentage of extended-family households in the urban barangays of Cebu than its rural barangays: 46% in the urban compared to 27% in the rural barangays. Therefore in principle there are more relatives available to urban mothers as substitute care givers than to rural mothers. Of the cohort of mothers covered in the study, 48% (1221) were working for pay at 12 months postpartum. Work patterns however differed markedly between urban and rural areas, probably largely reflecting differences in the opportunity structures. One study found that rural barangays in the Philippines had more family enterprises and fewer nonprimary industries than in urban barangays although in recent years, manual wage work had become more prevalent in the rural Philippines [24]. In the Cebu population, a larger percentage of rural mothers compared to urban mothers were self-employed (85%), whereas a higher proportion of urban mothers were wage workers (25%) and unpaid family workers (9%). The proportions of mothers working at home and the proportion of those working within a 5-min walk from home however did not differ substantially between urban and rural areas. Although in principle the self-employed mothers in this population had the flexibility and autonomy to combine work and child care, many who worked outside the home indicated that they did not take their infant to work with them (data not shown but available from the authors). This finding is consistent with DaVanzo and Lee [4] who found that only a small percentage of Malaysian mothers who were agricultural workers took their children to work; women’s agricultural work is often thought to be highly compatible with child care. A closer look at the types of occupations the Cebu mothers engaged in suggests that although selfemployed mothers may have the flexibility and autonomy to bring their child to work, the nature of their work precluded it. Some mothers, those who made charcoal for example, worked in a dirty environment; others such as market women were required to be
fairly mobile. Still others were in jobs that required concentration, those who worked as beauticians for example, such that the presence of a child was disruptive. Table 3 further elaborates the urban-rural differences mentioned above. It shows that a higher proportion of sales and service workers worked at home in urban (38%) compared to rural areas (19%); these were mainly mothers running sari-sari stores, very small groceries located in or near the home and serving the immediate neighbourhood. In rural areas, the sales and service workers were more likely to be market women who circulate. In contrast, a higher percentage of laborers and piece workers worked at home in rural areas compared to urban areas: 85% vs 78% among the self-employed and 100% vs 60% among the unpaid family workers. This reflects the fact that there are more non-primary industries in urban than in rural area. Part-time work was also more prevalent in rural compared to urban areas across all work status and occupational prestige categories. Part-time was defined as working less than a regular work week, i.e. 8 hr on the day preceding the survey and fewer than 48 hr during the week before the survey [l, 251. Forty percent of the white collar wage workers and 45% of the blue collar wage workers in rural areas worked part-time, compared to 35% and 28% in urban areas. A similar differential was observed for both categories of self-employed workers and for unpaid family workers. The results of the regression involving WKAWAY are displayed in Table 4, including first the model showing the significance of the interaction term between INCOTHR and CHILDTHR and CHILDLT6 and then the separate runs for mothers from households whose income was below the median and those from households above the median. The number of the mother’s children under the age of 6 was only statistically significant for mothers whose other household income was below the median (OR = 1.22); having more children under 6 made it more likely that the mother was working away from
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301
Table 3. Proportion of mothers working at home and part-time by work status, occupational prestige and urban/rural residence Percentage of working at home (vs away) Work status
wage-timers White collar Blue collar Self-employed Sales and service
Laborers and piece workers
Percentage working away part-time (vs full-time)
Urban
Rural
Urban
Rural
-
-
35% 28%
40% 45%
38% 78%
19% 85%
69% 41%
83% 74%
38% 60%
25% 100%
49% 50%
67% -
Unpaid family
Sales and service Laborers
home. It had no effect on whether or not mothers whose other household income was above the median worked outside the home. Having a paid helper living in the household also made it more likely that a mother was working outside the home (OR = 4.70) for those above the median. The presence of a grandmother (OR = 1.64) had a significant although weaker effect for mothers at both income levels. No other category of substitute care giver was significant. In addition, the mother’s work experience, often seen as a measure of commitment to the labor force, had a significant effect on whether or not she worked away from home. The more years of work experience the mother had, the more likely she was to be working outside the home at 12 months postpartum. Her education however had a non-linear effect. Table 4 shows the coefficients for the comparisons between the category means and the overall average. We chose a coding scheme for categorical variables that results in deviation coefficients since there is no meaningful control group in this analysis. Each category mean was compared to the overall average. Mothers with either an elementary or a secondary education were more likely to work outside the home than mothers with no education or a post-secondary education.
Table 5 displays the results of the analysis exploring the extent to which having more than one preschooler and the availability of substitute care givers influenced whether or not the mother was a wage worker paid on a time basis. This is the type of work thought to be the least compatible with child care. The factors with a significant influence on whether or not a mother was involved in wage work were similar to those that affect work outside the home in general but the effect was not always in the same direction. Having a paid helper or a grandmother in the home was highly predictive of wage time work (OR = 4.03 and 2.01 respectively). However, the number of preschoolers had the opposite effect on wage time work compared to work away from the home in general: more preschoolers made it less likely the mother was working in a wage time job. Somewhat unexpected was the finding that having more older children decreased the likelihood that a mother was in a wage-earning job paid on a time basis. This may be because in families that value education, older siblings are only potential child care substitute during the hours they are not in school To take advantage of their assistance, a mother therefore must have a flexible work situation; wage-earning
Table 4. Results of logistic regressions predicting whether or not the mother works for pay outside the home: main effects and separately by income level Dependent variable: WKAWAY Variables CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN INCOTHR’CHILDLT6
Full model
HH income above median
HH income below median
0.09 0.34’. 0.04 0.04 1.40** b** 0.11** -o.OO** -0.16 o.oo**
0.02 0.49**(1.64) 0.02 1.55”(4.71) n.s. 0.13”(1.14) -
0.20”(1.22) 0.52”( 1.67) 0.06 0.71 n.s. 0.09”( 1.09) -
lSikmificant at 0.05. **Significant at 0.01. ‘Odds ratios are in parentheses.
“EDUCLVGLeast-squares No schooling 0.36. Elementary -0.24” Secondary -0.26.. Post-secondary 0.14.
means (deviation coefficients):
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REBECCAMILES DOAN and BARRY M. POPKIN
Table 5. Results of logistic regression predicting whether or not the mother works for a wage paid on a time basis Dependent variable: WAGETIME CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN INCOTHR’CHILDLT6
-0.17* (0.84) 0.70**(2.01) 0.03 -0.15”(0.86) 1.39”(4.03) b** 0.12**(1.13) -0.00 0.40.( I .49) 0.00
*Significant at 0.05. l*Sia”ificant at 0.01 “Oddys ratios are in parentheses. bEDUCLVL-Least-squares means: No schooling -0.06 Elementary -0.66’. Secondary - 0.07 Post-secondary 0.79”
jobs typically cannot be worked around school schedules. As expected, the more years of work experience a mother had, the more likely she was to be holding a wage-earning job paid on a time basis (OR = 1.13). The same was true for education. Having a postsecondary education increased the likelihood of a wage time job whereas having an elementary education decreased it. Having no schooling or a high school diploma had no influence on whether or not a mother worked in a wage time job. The significance of the variable indicating urban residence highlights the importance of job opportunity structures in shaping the work situations of individual mothers. Results of the separate regressions involving hours worked among mothers working at home and among those working outside the home are shown in Table 6. The number of preschoolers had no influence either on number of hours worked by mothers outside the home or at home. Only education had a significant
Table 6. Results of OLS regressions predicting number of hours the mother worked for pay in the week before the survey-separately by whether the work is at home or awav from home Dependent variable: HRSWRK Hours worked last week Variables
At home
Outside the home
-0.71 - 1.04 -0.77
0.08 5.25” -0.49 -0.22 4.48 n.s. 0.20 -0.00 9.86*’ n.s. - 3.28’
CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN WORKSTAT WITHIN ‘Significant at 0.05. **Significant at 0.01. ‘EDUCLVL-Least-squares No schooling 0.27. Elementary -0.24*. Secondary -0.34*. Post-secondary 0.48.
a** 0.34 -0.00 5.18 -
means:
effect on number of hours worked at home: those with more than a secondary education worked significantly more hours. This result should be interpreted with caution however because only 39 mothers with a post-secondary education worked at home. For mothers who worked outside the home. presence of a grandmother was associated with more hours worked as was living in an urban barangay. The latter probably reflects the more rigid work regimes in modern sector employment. Work-related constraints on the other hand-to the extent that we were able to measure them here-do not appear to have much of an effect on hours worked. There was no significant difference between the mean number of hours worked by wage workers, the self-employed, or unpaid family workers. The means (adjusted for other factors in the model) were 35 hr per week, 32 and 38 respectively (data not shown). This finding suggests a great deal of variation within each category. An earlier descriptive table confirms this: although we generally think of wage work paid on a time basis as following a rigid 48 hr per week regime, half the wage workers in this sample worked less than that. Furthermore, the selfemployed have the autonomy and flexibility that allows them to work fewer hours but economic necessity or self-motivation may impel them to work as much or more than wage workers do. Hours worked by unpaid family workers probably vary tremendously depending on the nature of the family enterprise and on the role the mother plays in it. The coefficient associated with whether or not the work situation was within a S-minute walk from home was significant at the 0.1 level but not at 0.05; its sign however was in the expected direction: if work was close to home, the mothers were more likely to work fewer hours. DISCUSSION
In this study, we explored the implications of having more than one preschooler on two maternal work outcomes thought to be largely incompatible with infant care: work outside the home in general, and wage work remunerated on a time basis in particular, and on hours worked. Having multiple preschoolers only affected the likelihood of working for pay outside the home for mothers in households whose income (excluding hers) was below the median for this population. Multiple preschoolers increased the likelihood that mothers from resource-poor households were working outside the home. Although our data do not allow us to confirm this notion, it seems likely that resource-poor mothers with multiple preschoolers are impelled to work to care properly for their children; they are more likely to find lucrative work opportunities outside the home than at home. That we did not find a significant negative effect of number of preschoolers on the likelihood of taking
Women’s
work and infant care in the Philippines
on wage-time work or on the number of hours worked, is consistent with the findings of Entwistle et al. [26] in China: they found that more than one preschooler did not increase the time spent on child care for any substitute caregiver type. The likelihood of working outside the home may decrease with the arrival of the first child, but appears to be no different for mothers with one preschooler than for mothers with several. We found only two types of substitute care giver whose presence in the household had a consistent effect on the mother’s work-related behavior: grandmothers and paid helpers. Presence of a grandmother significantly increased the likelihood that these mothers of young children would be working outside the home or in wage work paid on a time basis, and increased the number of hours mothers spent working outside the home. This is not surprising since grandmothers (either maternal or paternal) are the most frequent care givers for children when mothers work. Presence of a paid helper in the household also increased the likelihood that a mother would work outside the home or in a wage-time job. From this study, we do not know to what extent household composition-presence of a paid helper or grandmother--depends on the mother’s work situation. Others suggest that households may join other households, or may bring relatives into their household, to allow mothers to work outside the home [27-291. We do know, however, that there were no significant household composition changes between baseline (a few months before the birth of the index child) and 12 months postpartum. Household composition is therefore not endogenous to the mother’s decision to work while the index child is still in its first year. It may depend on work and child care decisions made surrounding the birth and infancy of previous children. Furthermore, our study shows a difference in child care availability and work patterns between urban and rural mothers. More mothers live in extended families in urban than in rural barangays. Nevertheless, after controlling for availability of substitute care givers, urban residence increases the likelihood of wage-time and of longer hours worked. Findings regarding mother’s education suggest a cohort effect. Young mothers are more likely to have achieved a high school or college degree; they are also more likely to be motivated to work outside the home in more professional work situations. However, other studies suggest that education not only motivates women to work but may also cause them to value their own time spent caring for an infant. Such ambivalence is reflected in our findings: only those with an elementary degree (the most educated of the older cohort) and those with some post-secondary education (the most educated of the younger cohort) are more likely to work outside the home than others. Without data on educated women who do not have
303
small infants, we cannot interpret this finding much further except to suggest that education does not necessarily propel women into the labor force. This study points to the importance of looking more closely at how different dimensions of work facilitate the balancing of productive and reproductive roles as well as different work schedules. Future work must consider the possibility that mothers are fitting their work around the availability of others. Presser [30] finds that in the U.S. mothers and fathers often take on shift work to cover child care. Our study suggests that mothers may instead be working around the schedules of their older children. In either case, such a strategy often precludes work in the higher-paying modem sector. The implications of this have yet to be explored. We found no evidence in this study that the need for child care keeps mothers with young children from working, other things being equal. It is troubling, however, that mothers in the lower income brackets may be pulled into the labor force to provide for their young children regardless of whether they can mobilize adequate child care substitutes. An ethnographic study carried out in Honduras found that women in low-paying, unstable jobs often had the most difficulty arranging adequate care for their children [31]. These women may have to settle for job situations that give them flexibility but not necessarily enough income to rise above poverty. Alternatively, those may be the only jobs available to them. When the need to work comes into conflict with the need for child care, adverse health consequences may result. Acknowledgemenrs-This study is part of a collaborative research project among the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, directed by Dr Florentino S. Solon; the Office of Population Studies, University of San Carlos, directed by Dr Wilhelm Flieger; and a group from the Carolina Population Center. Barry M. Popkin of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is coordinating the total project. Funding for the project design and data collection were provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (grant numbers ROl-HDl9983A, ROl-HD18880, and ROIHD23182), the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), Nestle’s Coordinating Center for Nutrition Research, Wyeth International, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. National Academy of Science. Analysis funding for this naner was nrovided bv NIH (HDl8880). We thank
AmaLda Lyerly,*Gina Gantt Dahiya, and Lynn Igoe for their extensive assistance. We also thank Barbara Entwistle, Amy Ong Tsui, and anonymous reviewers for their comments and technical advice.
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REBECCA MILES DOAN and BARRY M. POPKIN
by Buvinic M. et al.), p. 92. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1983. DaVanzo J. and Lee D. L. P. The compatibility of child care with market and nonmarket activities: Preliminary evidence from Malaysia. In Women and Poverty in the Third World (Edited by Buvinic M. et al.), p. 62. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1983. Leslie J. and Paolisso M. Women’s Work and Child Welfare in the Third World, AAA Symposium Series Westview, Boulder, CO, 1989. Presser H. B. and Baldwin W. Child care as a constraint on emplyment: Prevalence, correlates, and bearing on the work and fertility nexus. Am. J. Sot. 85, 1202, 1980. Engle P. Child care strateaies of working and nonworking women in rural and urban Guatemala. In Women’s Work and Child Welfare in the Third World, AAA Symposium Series (Edited by Leslie J. and Paolisso M). Publisher, Westview, CO, 1989. Blau D. M. and Robins P. K. Child-care costs and family labor supply. Rev. Bon. Stat. 70, 374, 1986. OEF~(Overseas~I%ucation Fund) Child Care Needs of Low Income Mothers in Less Developed Countries. OEF International, Washington DC, 1979. Nerlove S. B. Women’s workload and infant feeding practices: A relationship with demographic implications. Ethnology 13, 267, 1974. - _ _ Leibowitz A.. Waite L. J. and Witsbereer C. Child care for preschoolers: Differences by child’; age. Demography 25, 205, 1988. King E. M. and Domingo L. J. The changing status of Filipino women across family generations. Philippine Pop. J. 2, 1, 1986. Domingo L. J. Women and work: Some life cycle issues. 1983 National Demographic Survey Paper No. 5. Population Institute, College of Social Science and Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines, 1985. Darian J. C. Convenience of work and the iob constraint of children. Demography 12, 245, 1975: Cebu Study Team. Underlying and Proximate Determinants of Child Health: The Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study. Am. J. Epidemiol. 133, 185, 1991. Adair L. S. and Popkin B. M. Birth weight, maturity and proportionality in Filipino infants. Hum. Biol. 60, 319, 1988. Guilkey D. K., Popkin B. M., Akin J. S. et al. Prenatal care and pregnancy outcomes in the Philippines. J. Dev. Econ. 30, 241, 1989. Wong E., Popkin B. M., Akin J. S. et al. Accessibility, quality of care and prenatal care use in the Philippines. Sot. Sci. Med. 24, 927, 1987.
A. Who are the self-employed? 19. MacEwen-Scott In Casual Work and Poverty in Third World Cities (Edited by Bromley R. and Gerry C.). Wiley, Toronto, 1979. issues in social support 20. O’Reilly P. Methodological and social network research. Sot. Sci. Med. 29, 863, 1988. 21. Myers R. G. and Indriso C. Women’s work and child care. Supporting the integration of women’s productive and reproductive roles in resource-poor households in developing countries. Revised version of paper prepared for a workshop, Issues Related to Gender, Technology, and Development, at the Rockefeller Foundation, NY, 26-27 February 1987. R. My brother’s keeper: 22. Weisner T. S. and Gallimore child and sibling caretaking. Curr. Anthropol. 18, 169, 1977. Studies, University of San Carlos. 23. Office of Population Metro Cebu Child Health and Survival Study data collection and data encoding activities: Final report. Cebu City, Philippines. C. M. Risk factors of the decision to 24. Raymundo breastfeed (unpublished manuscript). Population Institute, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines. n.d. 25. Joekes S. Women’s work and social support for child care in the Third World. In Women’s Work and Child Welfare in the Third World, AAA Symposium Series (Edited by Leslie J. and Paolisso M.). Westview, Boulder, CO, 1989. 26. Entwistle B. er al. Spending less time, sharing the task: Market work and child care in eight provinces of China. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Population Association of America, 6 March 1991. structure and demographic change. 27. Cain M. Patriarchal Paper presented at IUSSP Conference on Women’s Position and Demographic change in the Course qf Development, Oslo, 1987. 28. DeVos S. Latin American Households in Comparative Perspective. Working Paper 85-16. University of Wisconsin Center for Ecology and Demography, Madison, 1985. household for29. Hajnal J. Two kinds of preindustrial mation systems. Pop. Dev. Rev. 8, 1982. 30. Presser H. B. Can we make time for children? The economy, work schedules, and child care. Demography 26, 523, 1989. and maternal employment in 31. O’Gara C. Breast-feeding urban Honduras. In Women’s Work and Child Welfare in the Third World, AAA Symposium Series (Edited by O’Gara C. et al.). Westview, Boulder, CO, 1989.
0277-9536193 $6.00+ 0.00 Copyright Q 1993Pergamon Press Ltd
WOMEN’S WORK AND INFANT THE PHILIPPINES
CARE IN
REBECCAMILES DOAN’ and BARRY M. POPKIN* ‘Research Sociologist, Institute for Health and human Services Research, Florida State University, 2035 E. Dirai Drive, Innovation Park, Tallahassee, FL 32310, U.S.A. and 2Professor of Nutrition and Fellow, Carolina Population Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Abstract-Using data from a survey of 3000 Filipino infants and mothers, we analyze the implications of having more than one preschooler on several work outcomes, as well as the effect of availability of substitute care givers. The work outcomes of interest are those thought to be least compatible with infant care: work outside the home, wage work remunerated on a time basis, and long working hours. Our findings suggest that having multiple preschoolers only makes a difference for mothers whose household income is below the median: it increases their likelihood of working outside the home. Grandmothers and paid helpers consistently increase the likelihood of the various work outcomes and increase hours worked. Our findings suggest that urban residence, an indicator of work opportunity structure, increases the likelihood of wage-time work and is associated with longer working hours. Key worcis-child
care, women’s work, job compatibility, Philippines
INTRODUCTION
Proportions of women in the official labor force statistics and in informal employment positions have been rising in the Third World. Increasingly women, like men, are becoming involved in work that takes them away from home for long hours and has a rigid regime. Strategies women have traditionally relied on to balance their productive and reproductive rolessuch as working at home, coming home to feed children or taking them to work-may not work when jobs are far from home, schedules are rigid and hours longer [l-4]. This change in the nature of women’s work has led to an interest among child survival researchers in understanding to what extent and under what circumstances productive and maternal roles may interfere with or constrain each other [S]. It has also led to a concern that families will face increasing child care difficulties as extended family households become less common, urbanization increases, and job opportunities become less compatible with child care. As a result, child health may be adversely affected. One aspect of this problem that has received little attention is to what extent and under what circumstances having preschool children influences the mother’s employment. Having preschoolers to care for is usually thought of as a constraint on paid employment for the mother, particularly if she has more than one [6]. However there is some evidence that women in resource-poor households may be impelled to work for pay to meet the needs of their young children. One study showed that mothers who were bringing in income were more able to provide the energy- and protein-dense food important to *a4
36,~-1
the growth of children who had passed the age of weaning [7]. The extent to which preschoolers are a constraint on maternal employment depends in large part on the availability of substitute child care. A number of studies have looked at this issue in the United States [6,8], but little is known about the work and child care dynamics in a developing country context. A six-country comparative study carried out by the Overseas Education Fund found that the majority of low-income women used substitute child care givers from within their own households [9]. Grandmothers, other female relatives, and older siblings were reported most often as the preferred alternative care givers [9]. Some institutional child care services have been established in most countries but use is very low. In the absence of alternative child care, a mother from a resource-poor household may be impelled to take low paid work in the home, or may have to leave her child or children unattended while she works [7]. The effect of preschoolers on the mother’s employment is also likely to depend in part on the nature of her work. Some employment situations allow the mother to combine her productive and child care roles. An early study described such jobs as ones in which “the participant is not obliged to be far from home; the tasks are relatively monotonous and do not require rapt concentrations; and the work is not dangerous, can be performed in spite of interruptions, and is easily resumed once interrupted” [lo, P. 31. Modem-sector jobs however, tend to be incompatible with child care as do many work situations that require the mother to be away from home. The availability of substitute child care is therefore likely to be more crucial for mothers of preschoolers who 291
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work outside the home and in modern-sector jobs in particular, than for self-employed mothers or mothers who work at home. In this study, we take advantage of the rich empirical detail available in a survey of a 12-month birth cohort of about 3000 Filipino infants and their mothers, to explore the relationship between mother’s work and need for care (the number of preschoolers she has). Since all the mothers in the cohort have at least one infant we cannot compare them to mothers without small children. Rather, our interest is in the difference between mothers with one preschool child and those with several. In the first part of this study, we draw on a framework developed by Leibowitz et al. [ll] and examine the extent to which the mother’s need for care influences two work situations generally thought to be incompatible with child care: paid work outside the home and wage work paid on a time basis. In the analysis we include measures of the availability of substitute care givers as well as the mother’s work experience to reflect her attachment to the work force, and her household’s income (excluding her own) to indicate economic necessity. Urban/rural residence is included to account for differences in work opportunity structures. In addition. we take into account mother’s education. Increasing levels of female education have been associated with higher levels of female labor force participation in many parts of the world and in particular with more participation in professional jobs. This is also true in the Philippines. Based on 1978-80 data, one study compared daughters to their mothers and found rising educational levels, a later age at marriage, and a greater likelihood of entering the labor force and holding a professional job [12]. Another study found that women with no schooling had the lowest labor force participation; 60% of the elementary-through-college-educated were in the labor force and 90% of those with a college education and above. Education also made white collar jobs more likely [13]. In the second part of the study, we examine the extent to which these same factors influence the amount of time working mothers spend in paid work, whether at home or outside the home. Part-time work is one strategy mothers use worldwide to balance maternal and productive roles [14]. We include in the analysis two characteristics of work situations that affect child care: the flexibility of work regimes and the location of work. DATA AND METHODS
Surcey design The study site embraced the City of Cebu and surrounding rural areas of the central Philippines island of Cebu. It included Cebu city, coastal towns, a number of villages in mountainous and coastal areas, and residential areas on smaller islands. A
stratified
single-stage sampling procedure was used to select a random sample of 33 barangays (17 urban and 16 rural) for the final sample. Households were surveyed to collect data on all births between 1 May 1983, and 30 April 1984. Baseline pregnancy surveys were obtained for 3327 women who gave birth during that 12-month period. For this analysis of women’s work and infant care, the sample consisted of the 3080 women, having single live births, for whom baseline and birth information are available.
Survey instruments Information on households, mothers, and infants was collected through three types of surveys described in detail elsewhere [15-181. These include (1) a baseline survey of socioeconomic, employment, household composition, health and dietary variables collected at the beginning (6th month of pregnancy) and then repeated at the 12th and 24th month after birth of the index child; (2) a birth history survey of delivery-related infant health and anthropometric data; and (3) a longitudinal survey providing prospective information on dietary intake, morbidity, and infant growth, along with selected individual and household variables collected at 2-month intervals. In this study, we use the data collected at 12 months postpartum since these included the earliest detailed information about occupation needed for this analysis: work type and status, and income and earnings derived from farm activities and all other family enterprises as well as wage labor paid on a per hour or per piece basis. We also use the general work information gathered at 12 months postpartum through the longitudinal survey instrument. The infant care data we use are also from the 12-month postpartum longitudinal survey. They include extensive information on who within the household fed, bathed, and watched the infant in the previous 24 hr and how much time was spent. Measurement Table 1 describes the variables used in the analysis. WKAWAY and WAGETIME are the two dependent variables examined in the first part of the study. In the survey, respondents were asked to report any paid work (either informal or formal) or unpaid work in a family enterprise that took place in the week prior to the survey. Unfortunately, the data do not allow us to look at what portion of the day the mother worked nor whether work was regular and continuous or irregular. We used the question about whether the mother was paid on a time or a piece basis to distinguish wage labor from self-employment. The self-employed category includes those women reporting themselves as such as well as 250 pieceworkers. Pieceworkers are not truly self-employed since they depend on a particular supplier for their work [19]. However, they have more in common with the self-employed than
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Table 1. Descriotion of variables Variables
Description
Work
WKAWAY paid work takes place outside the home (outside the home = 1) WAGETIME work is remunerated through wages paid on a time basis (wagetimer = I) HRSWRK no. of hours person worked for pay during week preceding the survey Need for care
CHILDLT6
no. of mother’s children under age 6
Availability of substitute care givers
GRANDMA OTHFEM OTHAD CHILDGT6 HELPER
indicates presence of grandmother in household (present = 1) no. of female adult relatives over age 13 residing in household no. of other adult relatives in household no. of mother’s children over age 6 presence of paid helper in household; in the Philippines, often a distant cousin from family’s place of origin (present = 1)
Preferences and rt-sources
EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR
level of education achieved: 0 = no schooling; 1 = finished elementary; 2 = finished secondary; 3 = some post secondary no. of years mother worked before becoming pregnant with index child household income excluding mother’s earnings
Urban/ruralresidence
URBAN
household is in urban or rural barangay (urban = 1)
Constraints associated with the work situation
WORKSTAT categorical variable: mother is wage-time worker , self-employed, or unpaid family worker OCCUP occupation (lists available from authors) work located within a 5-min walk from home (within = 1) WITHIN
with wage workers so have been grouped for the purposes of this study. The main independent variables of interest are need for care and the availability of substitute care givers. Need for care is measured as the number of the mother’s children who are under age 6 (CHILDLT6). We adopt conservative measures of availability of substitute care givers and include only family members residing in the same household as the mother. Others have pointed out the difficulty of measuring true availability of social support from within the household: often such assistance does not materialize until the need arises, thereby making it a part of the decision rather than a determinant of it
WI. We address the issue of differential availability and quality of care by entering each type of substitute care giver separately. The spouse as a potential care giver was dropped from the analysis because his presence had no influence on work situation or hours worked. This is consistent with the findings of other studies indicating that spouses seldom make much of a contribution to infant care [21,22]. The lack of significance may also be because there is not enough variation in this population. Virtually all the mothers live with a spouse. Indicators of the mother’s preferences and resources were also included in the model (see Table 1) as well as whether she lived in an urban or a rural area; her residence is an indicator of the work opportunity structure she faces. The classification of barangays (equivalent to neighbourhoods in the urban context and villages in the rural context) into urban and rural in this study differs somewhat from that used by the Census Bureau of the Philippines. We consider barangays separated from the core of Cebu City by large stretches of open lands rural rather than urban [23]. In the second part of the study we analyzed only those mothers who were working at 12 months
postpartum. The dependent variable was the number of hours the mother worked during the week preceding the survey (HRSWRK). In addition to the care giver availability and background variables included in the first part of the study, in the analysis of hours worked we also included two characteristics of the work situation itself that may influence the number of hours worked: the relative flexibility of the work regime and the location of the job relative to the woman’s home. As mentioned earlier, we categorized work situations according to the method of remuneration (WORKSTAT): wage workers paid on a time basis, self-employed workers (including those paid by the piece) and unpaid family workers. These work situations differ in the degree of flexibility they offer. Self-employment is more flexible than wage work because of the greater autonomy self-employed workers enjoy. Wage-earning jobs, typically in the modem sector, tend to have more rigid work regimes and longer hours; mothers holding such jobs have little opportunity to reduce their hours to accommodate child care needs. Unpaid family workers have the greatest flexibility. Whether or not the job is near home also influences a mother’s opportunity to work part-time. Mothers who work near home have greater flexibility, confirmed by mothers’ reports of whether or not they can come home to feed their children (data not shown). Analysis
We used a logistic regression procedure for the models explaining WKAWAY and WAGETIME, both of which are dichotomous variables. Since the interaction term between INCOTHR and CHILDLT6 was significant, a more parsimonious version of the model was run separately for mothers from households whose income was below the
REBECCA MILES DOAN and BARRY
300
median and those from households with income above the median. For the regressions involving HRSWRK, a general linear model regression procedure was used that handles models with both continuous and categorical independent variables. For this portion of the analysis, those who worked at home were considered separately from those who worked outside the home because joint production was common for women working at home. Survey responses indicated that the latter had difficulty separating out those hours they spent on child care and those spent at work since the two were often carried out simultaneously.
M. POPKIN
Table 2. Percentage distribution of mothers by urban/rural residence, extended-family living, and nature of work Urban
Rural
54% 46% (2186)
73% 27% (698)
25% 65% ($Z)
10% 85% 00 (14:)
41% 59% (900) 49% 51% (530)
42% 58% (320) 41% 59% (187)
Household structure
Nuclear Extended N Work stam
Wage-timers Self-employed Unpaid family workers N Location
ofwork
At home Outside the home N Within 5-min walk Not within 5-min walk N
RESULTS
The results of this study indicate that contrary to what is generally assumed, there is a higher percentage of extended-family households in the urban barangays of Cebu than its rural barangays: 46% in the urban compared to 27% in the rural barangays. Therefore in principle there are more relatives available to urban mothers as substitute care givers than to rural mothers. Of the cohort of mothers covered in the study, 48% (1221) were working for pay at 12 months postpartum. Work patterns however differed markedly between urban and rural areas, probably largely reflecting differences in the opportunity structures. One study found that rural barangays in the Philippines had more family enterprises and fewer nonprimary industries than in urban barangays although in recent years, manual wage work had become more prevalent in the rural Philippines [24]. In the Cebu population, a larger percentage of rural mothers compared to urban mothers were self-employed (85%), whereas a higher proportion of urban mothers were wage workers (25%) and unpaid family workers (9%). The proportions of mothers working at home and the proportion of those working within a 5-min walk from home however did not differ substantially between urban and rural areas. Although in principle the self-employed mothers in this population had the flexibility and autonomy to combine work and child care, many who worked outside the home indicated that they did not take their infant to work with them (data not shown but available from the authors). This finding is consistent with DaVanzo and Lee [4] who found that only a small percentage of Malaysian mothers who were agricultural workers took their children to work; women’s agricultural work is often thought to be highly compatible with child care. A closer look at the types of occupations the Cebu mothers engaged in suggests that although selfemployed mothers may have the flexibility and autonomy to bring their child to work, the nature of their work precluded it. Some mothers, those who made charcoal for example, worked in a dirty environment; others such as market women were required to be
fairly mobile. Still others were in jobs that required concentration, those who worked as beauticians for example, such that the presence of a child was disruptive. Table 3 further elaborates the urban-rural differences mentioned above. It shows that a higher proportion of sales and service workers worked at home in urban (38%) compared to rural areas (19%); these were mainly mothers running sari-sari stores, very small groceries located in or near the home and serving the immediate neighbourhood. In rural areas, the sales and service workers were more likely to be market women who circulate. In contrast, a higher percentage of laborers and piece workers worked at home in rural areas compared to urban areas: 85% vs 78% among the self-employed and 100% vs 60% among the unpaid family workers. This reflects the fact that there are more non-primary industries in urban than in rural area. Part-time work was also more prevalent in rural compared to urban areas across all work status and occupational prestige categories. Part-time was defined as working less than a regular work week, i.e. 8 hr on the day preceding the survey and fewer than 48 hr during the week before the survey [l, 251. Forty percent of the white collar wage workers and 45% of the blue collar wage workers in rural areas worked part-time, compared to 35% and 28% in urban areas. A similar differential was observed for both categories of self-employed workers and for unpaid family workers. The results of the regression involving WKAWAY are displayed in Table 4, including first the model showing the significance of the interaction term between INCOTHR and CHILDTHR and CHILDLT6 and then the separate runs for mothers from households whose income was below the median and those from households above the median. The number of the mother’s children under the age of 6 was only statistically significant for mothers whose other household income was below the median (OR = 1.22); having more children under 6 made it more likely that the mother was working away from
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301
Table 3. Proportion of mothers working at home and part-time by work status, occupational prestige and urban/rural residence Percentage of working at home (vs away) Work status
wage-timers White collar Blue collar Self-employed Sales and service
Laborers and piece workers
Percentage working away part-time (vs full-time)
Urban
Rural
Urban
Rural
-
-
35% 28%
40% 45%
38% 78%
19% 85%
69% 41%
83% 74%
38% 60%
25% 100%
49% 50%
67% -
Unpaid family
Sales and service Laborers
home. It had no effect on whether or not mothers whose other household income was above the median worked outside the home. Having a paid helper living in the household also made it more likely that a mother was working outside the home (OR = 4.70) for those above the median. The presence of a grandmother (OR = 1.64) had a significant although weaker effect for mothers at both income levels. No other category of substitute care giver was significant. In addition, the mother’s work experience, often seen as a measure of commitment to the labor force, had a significant effect on whether or not she worked away from home. The more years of work experience the mother had, the more likely she was to be working outside the home at 12 months postpartum. Her education however had a non-linear effect. Table 4 shows the coefficients for the comparisons between the category means and the overall average. We chose a coding scheme for categorical variables that results in deviation coefficients since there is no meaningful control group in this analysis. Each category mean was compared to the overall average. Mothers with either an elementary or a secondary education were more likely to work outside the home than mothers with no education or a post-secondary education.
Table 5 displays the results of the analysis exploring the extent to which having more than one preschooler and the availability of substitute care givers influenced whether or not the mother was a wage worker paid on a time basis. This is the type of work thought to be the least compatible with child care. The factors with a significant influence on whether or not a mother was involved in wage work were similar to those that affect work outside the home in general but the effect was not always in the same direction. Having a paid helper or a grandmother in the home was highly predictive of wage time work (OR = 4.03 and 2.01 respectively). However, the number of preschoolers had the opposite effect on wage time work compared to work away from the home in general: more preschoolers made it less likely the mother was working in a wage time job. Somewhat unexpected was the finding that having more older children decreased the likelihood that a mother was in a wage-earning job paid on a time basis. This may be because in families that value education, older siblings are only potential child care substitute during the hours they are not in school To take advantage of their assistance, a mother therefore must have a flexible work situation; wage-earning
Table 4. Results of logistic regressions predicting whether or not the mother works for pay outside the home: main effects and separately by income level Dependent variable: WKAWAY Variables CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN INCOTHR’CHILDLT6
Full model
HH income above median
HH income below median
0.09 0.34’. 0.04 0.04 1.40** b** 0.11** -o.OO** -0.16 o.oo**
0.02 0.49**(1.64) 0.02 1.55”(4.71) n.s. 0.13”(1.14) -
0.20”(1.22) 0.52”( 1.67) 0.06 0.71 n.s. 0.09”( 1.09) -
lSikmificant at 0.05. **Significant at 0.01. ‘Odds ratios are in parentheses.
“EDUCLVGLeast-squares No schooling 0.36. Elementary -0.24” Secondary -0.26.. Post-secondary 0.14.
means (deviation coefficients):
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REBECCAMILES DOAN and BARRY M. POPKIN
Table 5. Results of logistic regression predicting whether or not the mother works for a wage paid on a time basis Dependent variable: WAGETIME CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN INCOTHR’CHILDLT6
-0.17* (0.84) 0.70**(2.01) 0.03 -0.15”(0.86) 1.39”(4.03) b** 0.12**(1.13) -0.00 0.40.( I .49) 0.00
*Significant at 0.05. l*Sia”ificant at 0.01 “Oddys ratios are in parentheses. bEDUCLVL-Least-squares means: No schooling -0.06 Elementary -0.66’. Secondary - 0.07 Post-secondary 0.79”
jobs typically cannot be worked around school schedules. As expected, the more years of work experience a mother had, the more likely she was to be holding a wage-earning job paid on a time basis (OR = 1.13). The same was true for education. Having a postsecondary education increased the likelihood of a wage time job whereas having an elementary education decreased it. Having no schooling or a high school diploma had no influence on whether or not a mother worked in a wage time job. The significance of the variable indicating urban residence highlights the importance of job opportunity structures in shaping the work situations of individual mothers. Results of the separate regressions involving hours worked among mothers working at home and among those working outside the home are shown in Table 6. The number of preschoolers had no influence either on number of hours worked by mothers outside the home or at home. Only education had a significant
Table 6. Results of OLS regressions predicting number of hours the mother worked for pay in the week before the survey-separately by whether the work is at home or awav from home Dependent variable: HRSWRK Hours worked last week Variables
At home
Outside the home
-0.71 - 1.04 -0.77
0.08 5.25” -0.49 -0.22 4.48 n.s. 0.20 -0.00 9.86*’ n.s. - 3.28’
CHILDLT6 GRANDMA OTHRAD CHILDGT6 HELPER EDUCLVL WORKEXP INCOTHR URBAN WORKSTAT WITHIN ‘Significant at 0.05. **Significant at 0.01. ‘EDUCLVL-Least-squares No schooling 0.27. Elementary -0.24*. Secondary -0.34*. Post-secondary 0.48.
a** 0.34 -0.00 5.18 -
means:
effect on number of hours worked at home: those with more than a secondary education worked significantly more hours. This result should be interpreted with caution however because only 39 mothers with a post-secondary education worked at home. For mothers who worked outside the home. presence of a grandmother was associated with more hours worked as was living in an urban barangay. The latter probably reflects the more rigid work regimes in modern sector employment. Work-related constraints on the other hand-to the extent that we were able to measure them here-do not appear to have much of an effect on hours worked. There was no significant difference between the mean number of hours worked by wage workers, the self-employed, or unpaid family workers. The means (adjusted for other factors in the model) were 35 hr per week, 32 and 38 respectively (data not shown). This finding suggests a great deal of variation within each category. An earlier descriptive table confirms this: although we generally think of wage work paid on a time basis as following a rigid 48 hr per week regime, half the wage workers in this sample worked less than that. Furthermore, the selfemployed have the autonomy and flexibility that allows them to work fewer hours but economic necessity or self-motivation may impel them to work as much or more than wage workers do. Hours worked by unpaid family workers probably vary tremendously depending on the nature of the family enterprise and on the role the mother plays in it. The coefficient associated with whether or not the work situation was within a S-minute walk from home was significant at the 0.1 level but not at 0.05; its sign however was in the expected direction: if work was close to home, the mothers were more likely to work fewer hours. DISCUSSION
In this study, we explored the implications of having more than one preschooler on two maternal work outcomes thought to be largely incompatible with infant care: work outside the home in general, and wage work remunerated on a time basis in particular, and on hours worked. Having multiple preschoolers only affected the likelihood of working for pay outside the home for mothers in households whose income (excluding hers) was below the median for this population. Multiple preschoolers increased the likelihood that mothers from resource-poor households were working outside the home. Although our data do not allow us to confirm this notion, it seems likely that resource-poor mothers with multiple preschoolers are impelled to work to care properly for their children; they are more likely to find lucrative work opportunities outside the home than at home. That we did not find a significant negative effect of number of preschoolers on the likelihood of taking
Women’s
work and infant care in the Philippines
on wage-time work or on the number of hours worked, is consistent with the findings of Entwistle et al. [26] in China: they found that more than one preschooler did not increase the time spent on child care for any substitute caregiver type. The likelihood of working outside the home may decrease with the arrival of the first child, but appears to be no different for mothers with one preschooler than for mothers with several. We found only two types of substitute care giver whose presence in the household had a consistent effect on the mother’s work-related behavior: grandmothers and paid helpers. Presence of a grandmother significantly increased the likelihood that these mothers of young children would be working outside the home or in wage work paid on a time basis, and increased the number of hours mothers spent working outside the home. This is not surprising since grandmothers (either maternal or paternal) are the most frequent care givers for children when mothers work. Presence of a paid helper in the household also increased the likelihood that a mother would work outside the home or in a wage-time job. From this study, we do not know to what extent household composition-presence of a paid helper or grandmother--depends on the mother’s work situation. Others suggest that households may join other households, or may bring relatives into their household, to allow mothers to work outside the home [27-291. We do know, however, that there were no significant household composition changes between baseline (a few months before the birth of the index child) and 12 months postpartum. Household composition is therefore not endogenous to the mother’s decision to work while the index child is still in its first year. It may depend on work and child care decisions made surrounding the birth and infancy of previous children. Furthermore, our study shows a difference in child care availability and work patterns between urban and rural mothers. More mothers live in extended families in urban than in rural barangays. Nevertheless, after controlling for availability of substitute care givers, urban residence increases the likelihood of wage-time and of longer hours worked. Findings regarding mother’s education suggest a cohort effect. Young mothers are more likely to have achieved a high school or college degree; they are also more likely to be motivated to work outside the home in more professional work situations. However, other studies suggest that education not only motivates women to work but may also cause them to value their own time spent caring for an infant. Such ambivalence is reflected in our findings: only those with an elementary degree (the most educated of the older cohort) and those with some post-secondary education (the most educated of the younger cohort) are more likely to work outside the home than others. Without data on educated women who do not have
303
small infants, we cannot interpret this finding much further except to suggest that education does not necessarily propel women into the labor force. This study points to the importance of looking more closely at how different dimensions of work facilitate the balancing of productive and reproductive roles as well as different work schedules. Future work must consider the possibility that mothers are fitting their work around the availability of others. Presser [30] finds that in the U.S. mothers and fathers often take on shift work to cover child care. Our study suggests that mothers may instead be working around the schedules of their older children. In either case, such a strategy often precludes work in the higher-paying modem sector. The implications of this have yet to be explored. We found no evidence in this study that the need for child care keeps mothers with young children from working, other things being equal. It is troubling, however, that mothers in the lower income brackets may be pulled into the labor force to provide for their young children regardless of whether they can mobilize adequate child care substitutes. An ethnographic study carried out in Honduras found that women in low-paying, unstable jobs often had the most difficulty arranging adequate care for their children [31]. These women may have to settle for job situations that give them flexibility but not necessarily enough income to rise above poverty. Alternatively, those may be the only jobs available to them. When the need to work comes into conflict with the need for child care, adverse health consequences may result. Acknowledgemenrs-This study is part of a collaborative research project among the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, directed by Dr Florentino S. Solon; the Office of Population Studies, University of San Carlos, directed by Dr Wilhelm Flieger; and a group from the Carolina Population Center. Barry M. Popkin of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is coordinating the total project. Funding for the project design and data collection were provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (grant numbers ROl-HDl9983A, ROl-HD18880, and ROIHD23182), the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), Nestle’s Coordinating Center for Nutrition Research, Wyeth International, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. National Academy of Science. Analysis funding for this naner was nrovided bv NIH (HDl8880). We thank
AmaLda Lyerly,*Gina Gantt Dahiya, and Lynn Igoe for their extensive assistance. We also thank Barbara Entwistle, Amy Ong Tsui, and anonymous reviewers for their comments and technical advice.
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