Resource Dilution or Resource Augmentation? Number of Siblings, Birth Order, Sex of the Child and Frequency of Mother’s Activities with Preschool Children
Year: 2012
Type: report
Abstract: This study sheds light on differences in the frequency of mother-child activities during the\nchildren’s early life stages. Using data on children aged 2-3 and 5-6 from the German Socio-\nEconomic Panel (SOEP), we answer two questions: (i) To what extent does the frequency of\nactivities vary between families? (ii) What changes in the frequency of activities occur for\neach child with the birth of a new sibling? Our results indicate that (i) The frequency with\nwhich mothers engage in activities is affected by the combined effects of the number of siblings,\nchildren’s sex, and birth order. In particular, as sibship size increases, mothers undertake\nmore activities with firstborn than with middle, younger, and even only children. (ii)\nChildren who already have a younger sibling receive an attention boost through the birth of a\nnew sibling, while others experience a reallocation of activities. To account for these results,\nwe go beyond the resource dilution hypothesis and offer an alternative explanation which assumes\neither an increase of efficiency in time spent in maternal activities or a spillover effect\nof other siblings on the overall level of activity with increasing sibship size.
Authors: Magdalena Osmanowski, Andrés Cardona
Institution: Bielefeld University
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2212798684