PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This study sheds light on differences in the frequency of mother-child activities during the children’s early life stages. Using data on children aged 2-3 and 5-6 from the German Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP), we answer two questions: (i) To what extent does the frequency of activities vary between families? (ii) What changes in the frequency of activities occur for each child with the birth of a new sibling? Our results indicate that (i) The frequency with which mothers engage in activities is affected by the combined effects of the number of siblings, children’s sex, and birth order. In particular, as sibship size increases, mothers undertake more activities with firstborn than with middle, younger, and even only children. (ii) Children who already have a younger sibling receive an attention boost through the birth of a new sibling, while others experience a reallocation of activities. To account for these results, we go beyond the resource dilution hypothesis and offer an alternative explanation which assumes either an increase of efficiency in time spent in maternal activities or a spillover effect of other siblings on the overall level of activity with increasing sibship size.