Making time to be informed: A panel approach to parenthood and media consumption

The scholarly literature consistently finds that women systematically consume less media or they prefer soft news over hard news, leading to more consumption of television over other means such as newspapers (Baum, 2002; Curran et al., 2009; Liu & Eveland, 2005). Additionally, news avoidance seems more prevalent amongst women than men (Benesch, 2012). This gap in media consumption is usually linked to women’s different position in society, assuming that careers, caring for children and the plethora of activities in their schedules deplete them of time to devote to public engagement. Yet, to the best of our knowledge this assumption remains to be tested. In this paper we intend to focus on exploring how having children hinders women’s and men’s media consumption. To what extent does a significant event such as having children impact citizens' media consumption? We argue that children are a multifaceted event with a negative effect on women's media consumption that men do not experience. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the one hand, we explore the different underlying mechanisms that could be triggered with parenthood. On the other, we use the Dutch LISS panel, which allows for a dynamic approach to individuals' media consumption throughout parenthood. Our main finding is that having children does not have an immediate effect on women's media consumption, rather it is cumulative as the infants grow older. This effect is observed both amongst working and non-working women seem to gradually disconnect. These results seem to suggest that even in a highly egalitarian country such as The Netherlands, the cognitive dimension of household work takes a toll on women's engagement with the news.