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Abstract
This paper uses the 1992 Time Use Survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to calculate the amount of time that parenthood adds to daily time commitment, and the impact of parenthood on the daily division of household labour. Because child care is most often performed simultaneously with other tasks, this paper includes secondary activity in calculating the time cost of children. It demonstrates that across the range of variation in labour force status, the time cost of parenthood is high; however, the impact of motherhood on total time commitment and on the proportion of work that is unpaid, is greater than the impact of fatherhood.