"Many fathers want to spend more time with their children and engage in household, but most of them continue to work full-time after the birth of a child. To better combine work and family, flexible working time arrangements might play a crucial role for fathers. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and fixed-effects regression models, we investigate the impact of flexible working time arrangements on actual working hours of men and fathers. A change from fixed to flexible arrangements is associated with an increase in working hours, but it is smaller for fathers than for non-fathers. Becoming a parent and changing into flexitime or self-determined working hours within the same year is associated with a short-term decrease in working hours. The study shows that employee-oriented working time arrangements help fathers to better combine work and family, but the decrease in working hours is still small."

Support: Digital