Unpaid care work is the invisible infrastructure of the American economy. This work—done by parents, extended family, and community members—sustains children, elders, and adults in need, keeps households functioning, and fills the vast gaps left by chronic underinvestment in the care system. This failure shifts responsibility onto caregivers—overwhelmingly women and mothers—leaving them to figure out work and family on their own, while the system continues to depend on their unpaid labor to function.

We tend to frame unpaid care as a burden, but that framing misses something important: Caregiving itself, especially when rooted in familial bonds, carries benefits for both caregiver and recipient. What makes it feel like a burden is the absence of support: no meaningful way to ensure the responsibility is shared, no income to compensate for the time it demands while foregoing time in paid work or for leisure, and few established workplace policies to make it easy to combine care and paid work. The tasks—and the costs—of making sure care needs are met are put on the shoulders of individuals and families. As a result, taking time to care for our loved ones has quietly become a luxury.

This reality falls unevenly. Unpaid care is central to the inequities women—particularly mothers—face in the labor market, as they remain far more likely than men to perform unpaid family care and are therefore more constrained in their paid working time. These disparities were sharpened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many schools and child and elder care facilities temporarily closed, and the demand for family care increased significantly,  particularly for people of color. Drawing on pre- and post-pandemic data from the American Time Use Survey, IWPR’s Unseen Efforts: Disparities in Unpaid Care Work Before and After COVID-19 working paper traces both the progress made and the persistent inequities in who provides care and how much they provide, and values the invisible infrastructure of unpaid care at roughly one trillion dollars, or 3.6 percent of GDP in 2024.*

Gender care gaps have fallen, while women still shoulder the majority of care.

The topline numbers remain stark. In 2024, women spent 2.5 hours per day on unpaid care, and men 1.6 hours, resulting in a gender care ratio of 156.3 percent.** This is a substantial difference, but nevertheless represents an improvement compared to 2018, when the ratio was 164.7 percent. Before the pandemic, in 2018, women spent on average 2.8 hours per day on unpaid care, compared to 1.7 hours for men. Average hours fell for women, coupled with a smaller decline for men.

Parents’ unpaid caregiving is more equally shared, yet solo parenting raises the stakes.

Analyzing average hours spent in unpaid care across the whole population obscures an important nuance: When men do engage in care, their time commitment is closer to women’s. In 2024, more than a third of women (36.2 percent) and more than a quarter of men (28.1 percent) provided at least 30 minutes of care on the reference day, making them “substantial caregivers.” Among this group, women spent 6.9 hours per day in unpaid care work, compared to 5.8 hours for men—still an unequal time use, but with a narrower gender gap of 128.8 percent compared to the overall population.

For parents of children younger than 13, caregiving is more equal and more intense.   Substantial caregiving rises to 96.4 percent for mothers and 91.0 percent for fathers—an almost equal likelihood of being substantial caregivers. That said, mothers spent more time than fathers on child care, 9.3 and 7.6 hours a day, respectively, leading to a gender care gap of 122.4 percent.

The data also point to the high caregiving time demands faced by single parents. Single mothers spent almost the same time as married mothers caring for their children—9.1 and 9.4 hours a day, respectively; single fathers clocked in at 6.7 hours, and married fathers at 7.7 hours. Parenting—especially solo parenting—is an extraordinarily demanding role.

Hidden in the average, changes in gender caregiving gaps also conceal large differences by race and ethnicity.

Gender gaps in the likelihood of being a substantial caregiver increased between 2018 and 2024—pre- and post-pandemic—for Asian women and men (from 112.7 to 130.7 percent) and Hispanic women and men (from 132.3 to 150.5 percent); remained almost unchanged for White women and men (122.7 and 122.4 percent); but fell substantially for Black women and men (from 164.7 to 132.8 percent). On the face of it, the change for Black women and men suggests an improvement. Yet behind these numbers is a dramatic fall of more than 10 percentage points, from 44.1 to 33.2 percent, of the likelihood of Black women being substantial caregivers.

One factor behind this is likely the much-discussed decline in fertility. IWPR’s paper shows the share (percent) of women and men living with young children declined across the board, but most strongly for Black women (from 22.5 to 18.7 percent) and Hispanic men (from 24.5 to 18.7 percent). Raising children has become more expensive in recent years, and the shifts in time spent on caregiving, especially the narrowing gaps for Black care providers, show a direct decline in caregiving participation rather than a reduction in the structural elements that led to high inequality in the past. As the economic costs of raising and caring for children continue to rise, changes in family formation and living arrangements will continue reshaping the way unpaid care is provided.

Not all men get to care: Socioeconomic status and job quality shape time spent providing care.

The biggest gender divide is not in how much care men and women provide once they are caregivers, but in whether they actively engage in providing care. This, in turn, is clearly influenced by socioeconomic status. Higher‑income and more educated individuals spend more time on unpaid care, particularly men. This finding raises an important question: Is providing care for loved ones now a luxury?

Men with at least a bachelor’s degree were 1.6 times more likely than men without a high school diploma to be substantial caregivers and spent 48 minutes more on average on care as substantial caregivers. Men living in households with at least $75,000 in annual income in 2024 were 1.3 times more likely to be substantial caregivers than those with an annual income below $35,000, though differences in time spent were not considerable.

These differences in income and education are also linked to racial/ethnic differences in the time men spend providing care. Spending time on care is much easier if one is in a job that provides paid time off and stable hours or allows you to work from home. Black and particularly Latino workers are less likely to have access to paid leave or to have stable and predictable schedules than White workers, and higher-income and White workers are more likely to be able to work remotely.

Differences between women were less marked because women tend to have fewer options to pass on care. Yet women living in higher-income households or women with at least a bachelor’s degree were also more likely to be substantial caregivers than other women. And, as with men, women in higher-paying jobs are more likely to have access to remote work and schedule control, although it’s worth noting that Black women in good jobs do not get the same access to flexibility as other women.

Care as infrastructure, not a luxury: What we need to expand progress.

Despite showing improvement in the gender gap in unpaid care provision, the working paper’s findings, taken together, point to an unsettling reality: When the ability to care for loved ones depends on job quality, education, and overall socioeconomic status, caregiving itself risks becoming a luxury rather than a shared enjoyment.

IWPR’s pre-and post-COVID-19 analysis of who provides how much unpaid care points to some welcome signs of shrinking gender gaps but also highlights differences by race and ethnicity, particularly when it comes to men’s engagement in care. The differences by socioeconomic status are a reminder that unpaid care work is not simply a burden but a necessity. It is also desirable—something that requires time, money, and a job with stability, good pay, and at least some benefits for those in paid work.

Care work, and most importantly, unpaid care work, keeps families, communities, and the economy together. However, as it remains unvalued and systematically unsupported, it will continue to create a bind for those who provide it, especially women and communities of color. If we don’t want caring for loved ones to be a burden for some and a luxury for others, we need to treat care as essential infrastructure and invest in it accordingly. That means ensuring families can access high-quality, affordable, and universal child care; expanding supports through publicly funded systems; and guaranteeing fair pay for care workers. It also requires policies like paid leave, fair scheduling, and workplace flexibility so that balancing professional and caregiving responsibilities becomes a reality for everyone. Valuing care means ensuring no one has to choose between caring for the people they love and having a stable and secure economic future.

*This valuation applies the very conservative hourly rate of the federal minimum wage of $7.25; unpaid care time includes all primary care (time that is spent exclusively on caring for anyone in the household, irrespective of their age), as well as half of secondary care time (the time spent on care of children younger than 13 years of age or adults 65 years and older while also doing something else, such cleaning, cooking, or working).

**Calculated by dividing women’s hours by men’s, which is the same method as calculating the gender earnings ratio.

Written by Ariane Hegewisch and Martha Susana Jaimes, PhD. This blog is part of IWPR’s Policies for Action Research Hub, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action program. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.