Many Spanish parents work with a split-shift schedule, which consists of a long lunch break, sometimes two hours, that extends working activities until late in the evening. Empirical evidence by researchers Pablo Gracia (European University Institute) and Matthijs Kalmijn (University of Amsterdam) suggests that this schedule has negative consequences on parents’ time in family and child-related activities.   Work Schedules and Family Time: The Case of Spain

Population ageing has recently boosted an extensive debate about how to measure individual aging. The chronological age, even if conventionally used, is somehow limited because it does not capture people’s own representation of aging, that is, how old people actually feel they are. In their study on the United States, Valeria Bordone and Bruno Arpino test the association between subjective age, as an alternative measure to chronological age, and two important social roles for older adults: having grandchildren and providing grandchild care.

Maximising health in later life is one of the most important policy issues for the welfare regimes of ageing societies. At the same time, health outcomes in later life can only be fully understood when also taking into account past experiences. For example, a woman who worked during most of her life might find herself with more economic and social resources later in life than a woman who mostly devoted her time to family responsibilities, and such accumulation of resources can positively influence her general health. 

Public child care provisions play a fundamental role in modern societies: They facilitate mothers’ participation in the labour market and foster children’s educational outcomes. If children spend much of the day in child care institutions, their mothers may decide to return to employment after childbirth, better reconciling work and family life. At the same time, providing education to children at early stages of life seems to have a positive impact on later social, behavioural, and cognitive outcomes. 

What is the ideal age to become a parent? The recent boost in the use of assisted reproduction techniques that allow women (and men) to have children at older ages has opened up a wider debate about the most appropriate age limit for using techniques to facilitate conception outside of the biological reproductive life cycle.