Poll: Who's Minding Your Kids?

According to recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau, more married fathers in the U.S. are helping care for the children while their spouses work.

In 2010, around 32 percent of married fathers were a regular source of care for their children under age 15, up from 26 percent in 2002. Around one in five fathers with working wives and preschool-aged children are the primary caregivers in their household. 

So where does Berkeley stand? There is no current information about the city's child care habits, although 2010 statistics show that 68.1 percent of Berkeley families with children under 17 years old had both parents in the labor force. 

Who takes care of the kids in your household? Take the poll below. Who works? Let us know in the comments.

The U.S. Census Bureau's tables, titled, "Who’s Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2010," examine child care arrangements for children living with their mothers. For most widowed, separated or divorced mothers in 2010, grandparents predominantly provided care for the children. Most mothers who had never been married had no regular child care arrangement in 2010.

For married couples, the down economy, along with the increasing number of married women moving into the labor force, may have caused more fathers to take over the child care.       

"A recession may force families to adjust their child care arrangements," said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau. “It can trigger unemployment or changes in work hours, thus increasing the availability of fathers to provide child care. It also can reduce available income to pay for child care outside of the home."

Child Care findings from the U.S. Census Bureau

• In a typical week, 12.2 million (61 percent) of the 20 million children in the U.S. under age 5 were in some type of regular child care arrangement. 

• In households with working moms, family members continue to serve as an important source of child care for preschoolers. In spring of 2010, 30 percent of preschoolers were regularly cared for by their grandparents, 29 percent were cared for by their fathers, and 12 percent received care from a sibling or other relative.

• Preschoolers with employed black and Hispanic mothers were more likely to be cared for by their grandparents than their fathers. Twenty-nine percent of black preschoolers were cared for by their grandparents, while a quarter (22 percent) were cared for by their fathers. A third of Hispanic preschoolers were regularly taken care of by their grandparent, compared with 29 percent who received care from their fathers.

• Among preschoolers of employed non-Hispanic white mothers, 30 percent were cared for by their fathers and 29 percent were cared for by their grandparents.

• Of the 21 million mothers who were employed in the spring of 2010, one-third reported they paid for child care for at least one of their children.

• Families with an employed mother and children younger than 15 paid an average of $138 per week for child care in 2010, up from $81 in 1985 (in constant 2010 dollars), the first year that these data were collected.

• Mothers with children under age 5 were more likely to make child care payments than mothers who only had children between the ages of 5 and 14 (47 percent and 23 percent, respectively).

• Families in poverty who paid for care in 2010 spent a greater proportion of their monthly income on child care than did families at or above the poverty line (40 percent compared with 7 percent).

• Among all children, self-care was much more prevalent among middle school-age children than among those in elementary schools: 10 percent of ages 5 to 11 and 30 percent of ages 12 to 14 regularly cared for themselves.