Does paternal childcare replace grandparental support in dual-earner families?

Abstract

Fathers’ participation in childcare has been on a steady rise in recent years. This article explores whether such growing involvement is replacing grandparents’ caring role or whether the two are complementary. The data used here were drawn from the Survey on the use of parental leave in Spain, whose coverage included 1125 working parents living with their likewise working partners and children under the age of 13 years. The results suggest that paternal and grandparental childcare tend to be more substitutional than complementary. The analysis also shows that a significant portion of dual-earner households do not routinely rely on grandparents for childcare, and that paternal and maternal grandparents do not replace but rather complement each other.