This study sheds light on differences in the frequency of mother-child activities during the\nchildren’s early life stages. Using data on children aged 2-3 and 5-6 from the German Socio-\nEconomic Panel (SOEP), we answer two questions: (i) To what extent does the frequency of\nactivities vary between families? (ii) What changes in the frequency of activities occur for\neach child with the birth of a new sibling? Our results indicate that (i) The frequency with\nwhich mothers engage in activities is affected by the combined effects of the number of siblings,\nchildren’s sex, and birth order. In particular, as sibship size increases, mothers undertake\nmore activities with firstborn than with middle, younger, and even only children. (ii)\nChildren who already have a younger sibling receive an attention boost through the birth of a\nnew sibling, while others experience a reallocation of activities. To account for these results,\nwe go beyond the resource dilution hypothesis and offer an alternative explanation which assumes\neither an increase of efficiency in time spent in maternal activities or a spillover effect\nof other siblings on the overall level of activity with increasing sibship size.
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