{"id":122103,"date":"2021-01-27T15:09:58","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T14:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=122103"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:21","slug":"i-hope-my-research-will-give-some-attention-to-all-the-unpaid-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/01\/27\/i-hope-my-research-will-give-some-attention-to-all-the-unpaid-care\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I hope my research will give some attention to all the unpaid care\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does family care influence the number of hours of paid work you do? Sara Rellstab answers this question in her thesis \u2018Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care over the Life-Cycle\u2019, which she defended from her home in Switzerland last Friday.<\/p>\n

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Sara Rellstab attending her defence from her home in Switzerland.<\/span><\/p>

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What\u2019s your dissertation about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI checked how creating and maintaining a family influences labour market participation. Creating and maintaining a family involves care work, such as raising children, informal care for elderly, or housework like cooking and cleaning. This care work is very valuable for our society, we cannot do without it. On the other hand, it takes up a lot of time, so if you\u2019re raising your kids, you have less time to do paid work, which means you work less and could become financially dependent on your partner. So, for example: I researched if having a child, or tending to a sick parent, influences your paid work hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

How did you conduct your research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis was pretty cool, because in the Netherlands there is very good administrative data, collected by the government on all inhabitants. You can, for example, combine demographic data with information on health and taxes. From a researcher\u2019s point of view, this is very nice. I could not have done this in Switzerland, for instance, because there are a lot of privacy concerns, so these kinds of linked data are not available.\u201d<\/p>\n

What did you find out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible to combine taking care of your sick parent without reducing your paid working hours in the Netherlands. One of the reasons for this is that the long-term care system for the elderly is very generous in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results are different when having children. Raising children requires a lot of unpaid care work. In this situation, Dutch fathers maintain their work hours, while mothers reduce their hours a lot. And since there are quite a lot of women who already work parttime after they have had children, they have more flexibility to accommodate caring for a sick parent in their schedules.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLevien Willemse<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Have you found reasons why so many women in the Netherlands work parttime?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many explanations for this, and I looked at one in more detail. Specifically, I tried to explain my finding that only women reduce their paid work hours after having children and men do not. My hypothesis was that gender norms play a role in this, because of the perception we have that care tasks are women\u2019s tasks and I found evidence supporting this. Then, I have to add that, in my opinion, the \u2018problem that women work parttime\u2019 that is often talked about does not cover the real issue. Rather than criticising women for working parttime, we should ask ourselves why men do not work parttime more often.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you think your thesis will make a difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a pragmatist, so I don\u2019t think my research will immediately change the world. But I still hope that it will give some attention and valuation to all the unpaid care that is being done. Also, maybe there are some couples who will ask themselves why they divided the tasks in a certain way, and if it\u2019s financially safe for both in case they split up.\u201d<\/p>\n

How was the PhD process for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were ups and downs. I had great supervisors and learned a lot, both about the topic I was researching but also about myself. What I found difficult is that you don\u2019t have a lot of success moments. Two or three times a year you\u2019re at a conference, where you present your work and get feedback. Otherwise, it\u2019s up to you to motivate yourself on a day-to-day basis, and this can be extremely hard. I clearly underestimated this when I started. What helped me was that I had friends outside of academia, to relativise the importance of work. Having a hobby also helps. In my case this was playing in a brass band.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does it feel to close this chapter of your life from afar?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think I haven\u2019t fully realised it yet. On the one hand I\u2019m proud to have finished the thesis, but on the other hand I still have two of my chapters left to publish. That means I\u2019ll still be working on parts of the thesis even after graduation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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