UC Merced

Fathers are taking an increasingly involved role in parenting. Most previous research has focused on education and household income in relation to which parent stays at home to take care of children, but the impact of wealth on fathers’ child caretaking time investment has not been thoroughly considered. Prior research has not considered the child caretaking time of parents who remain engaged with the workforce. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of wealth and class on father child caretaking time. Results show that household wealth is not significantly associated with father caretaking time. However, when wealth and father’s educational attainment levels both increase, father caretaking time also increases. Conversely, father caretaking time also increases when fathers have lower educational attainment paired with debt. It appears that wealth and class do make a difference, but only if there is congruence between wealth/debt and educational attainment.