When Life Changes: Actual and Preferred Working Hours around Family Transitions in the Netherlands

Weverthon Machado , Utrecht University
Ellen Verbakel, Radboud University Nijmegen

Research has documented widespread mismatches between the amount of hours employees work and the amount they prefer to work. These mismatches are linked to reduced job and life satisfaction, work-family conflict, and broader patterns of gender inequality. Yet the dynamics of hours mismatches across the life course remain poorly understood, particularly regarding family transitions — key moments when people reconsider their work-family balance and face shifting time constraints and economic needs. This paper investigates how actual and preferred working hours change around major family transitions in the Netherlands, and how these changes relate to the emergence and resolution of hours mismatches. The Netherlands provides a relevant context given the high prevalence of part-time work and the one-and-a-half earner model in which mothers work part-time and fathers full-time. We combine data from the Dutch Labor Force Survey with population registers providing information on union formation and dissolution, childbirth, and children starting school. Using an event-study design, we trace the evolution of actual hours, preferred hours, and mismatches from two years before to two years after each type of transition. We also investigate variation by gender and class, as these can be important dimensions along which the hours mismatches differ. Our analysis addresses several theoretical questions. By examining transitions that increase versus decrease parental demands, we test predictions from role conflict theory; by tracking the persistence or resolution of mismatches, we evaluate claims about labor market efficiency versus structural barriers that make it difficult for people to get the hours they want.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session P2. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 2