193 A Counterfactual Analysis of the Gender Gap in Parenting Time: Explained and Unexplained Variances at Different Stages of Parenting 1 Tom Buchanan* Adian McFarlane** Anupam Das*** INTRODUCTION It is well-known that mothers participate in childcare more than fathers. To a great extent, it also well-known that the persistence of this gap is due to the persistence of traditional gender roles. For example, fathers are more likely to obtain the role of primary breadwinner while mothers more often assume the role of primary caretaker. Less well-known is the extent to which these differences on work and family characteristics fully explain the persistently wide gap between mothers’ and fathers’ childcare time. How much of the gender gap is due to the differential impact of these characteristics? For instance, do hours of work have a different influence on fathers’ parenting time than mothers’? Does this differential impact change as children age? Disentangling these different aspects of the gender gap in childcare time has implications for gender, work, and family. Existing research addresses the gender gap in domestic work at different stages of family life (Coltrane & Ishii-Kuntz, 1992). In terms of timing of childbirth and strain on a family, most of the focus has been on the period in which the children are very young (Bryant & Zick, 1996; Maume, 2011). Qualitative research has also focused on the role of gender in the childcare of the first child (Miller, 2011). In this paper, we put more focus on life stages of the family by examining the gender gap in time spent parenting as the children age. Little is known about how the gender gap in childcare time changes with children’s ages. While many studies of childcare time have included measures of family size and children’s ages as controls, missing 1The authors would like to acknowledge editorial staff and reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this manuscript. In addition, we would like to thank Enrique Lopez and Kamile Baghaloo-Rose for their translations of our abstract into Spanish and Caroline McDonald-Harker for her translation into French. * Corresponding Author: Mount Royal University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, 4825 Mount Royal Gate SW, Calgary, AB, Canada T3E 6K6 (tbuchanan@mtroyal.ca). ** Nipissing University, 100 College Drive, Box 5002, North Bay, ON, Canada PIB 8L7 (adianm@nipissingu.ca). *** Mount Royal University, Department of Policy Studies, 4825 Mount Royal Gate SW Calgary, AB, Canada T3E 6K6 (adas@mtroyal.ca). ©Journal of Comparative Family Studies Volume XLVI1 Number 2 Spring 2016