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The increasing prevalence of non-standard work and its adverse consequences are well documented. However, we still know little about how common non-standard work is amongst parents, and whether its negative consequences are further transmitted to their children. Using data from the German Microcensus, we document the prevalence and concentration of temporary employment and non-standard work schedules in households with children in Germany. Second, we examine the extent to which variation in this temporal dimension of parental employment is associated with children's school track. Results show that in about half of all German households with children in lower-secondary school at least one parent has a temporary contract or regularly works evenings or Saturdays. We find that children whose mother always works evenings or Saturdays are substantially less likely to transition to the academic school track. By contrast, we find no significant association between fathers' non-standard work schedules and children's school track. We also find no evidence of an association between parents' temporary employment and children's school track placement. These divergent findings highlight the importance of disaggregating non-standard work into its specific components and differentiating between mothers' and fathers' non-standard work when investigating the consequences of parental nonstandard work for children's educational and life chances.

Introduction

Temporary employment contracts and non-standard work schedules have come to characterize the working lives of a significant share of the European labour force. Between 1985 and 2019, the proportion of dependent workers on temporary contracts (as opposed to permanent contracts) grew by about 40 percent in the European Union (OECD, 2020) . By 2019, one in seven dependent employees in the European Union, and one in eight dependent employees in Germany, was employed on a temporary contract (ibid.). 1 Moreover, a substantial part of the European labour force works non-standard schedules. In 2019, about 26 percent of the labour force in the European Union (25 percent in Germany) regularly worked on weekends, and about 15 percent of the labour force (19 percent in Germany) regularly worked on evenings (Eurostat, 2022) .

A growing body of evidence demonstrates significant adverse consequences of nonstandard work, particularly concerning the temporal dimension of work. Individuals in temporary employment or with non-standard work schedules report lower levels of economic security (Gash and Inanc, 2013; McGovern, Smeaton, and Hill, 2004) , physical health (Virtanen et al., 2005; Benach et al., 2014) and mental health (Inanc, 2020; Schneider and Harknett, 2019; Zhao et al., 2019) , compared to individuals with permanent employment contracts and standard work schedules. Considering the known effects of parental stress, parental ill-health, and reductions in parent-child time on children's development and educational attainment (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1995; Shonkoff et al., 2012) , parental temporary employment and non-standard work schedules can be expected to lower children's educational attainment.

Existing research that considers characteristics of children from parents in non-standard work tends to focus on the United States and examines psychological and physical measures of child wellbeing and ability. These studies suggest that children of parents with non-standard work schedules are more likely to exhibit behavioural problems (Han, 2008; Han, Miller, and Waldfogel, 2010; Dunifon et al., 2013; Kaiser, Li, and Pollmann-Schult, 2019; Wang, 2023) , higher levels of depression (Strazdins et al., 2006; Han and Miller, 2009) , lower cognitive ability (Han, 2005; Han and Fox, 2011) , and are more likely to be overweight (Miller and Han, 2008; Champion et al., 2012; Li et al., 2019 ). 2 However, there is little evidence on how mothers' and fathers' temporary employment and non-standard work schedules are associated with children's educational attainment, particularly in Europe. This constitutes an important limitation of the existing literature, since children's educational attainment is a key factor shaping their future labour market chances and quality of life (Breen and Müller, 2020; Müller, Steinmann and Ell, 1998) .

Moreover, existing research tends to rely on industry-specific samples, such as the nursing or the retail sector (e.g., Davis et al., 2006; Chait Barnett et al., 2008; Harknett et al., 2020) . Many studies also limit their focus to mothers' employment (e.g., Han, 2005; 2008; Miller and Han, 2008; Dunifon et al., 2013; Hsin and Felfe, 2014) , while few studies examine the association between child outcomes and the employment conditions of both parents (c.f. Han, 2020; Li et al., 2019; Han et al., 2010) . Particularly with respect to the European context, we therefore have limited population-level evidence on the prevalence of non-standard work in households with children and its relationship with children's educational attainment and life chances.

We conceptualize the temporal dimension of parental employment as consisting of two components; the first component refers to the length of the employment contract that parents hold and the second component concerns parents' daily work schedules. Our paper systematically examines the relationship between this temporal dimension of parental employment and children's educational attainment. More specifically, we make three main empirical contributions. First, we document the prevalence and concentration of temporary employment and non-standard work schedules among households with children in Germany. Second, we shed light on the association between parents' temporary employment and children's educational attainment. Third, we examine the association between parents' frequency of working during evenings and on Saturdays and children's educational attainment.

Germany constitutes an instructive case for examining the relationship between parental non-standard work and children's education. Since the early 1990s, the German labour market has undergone multiple structural changes, marked by a progressive flexibilization of labour market regulation (Clasen, 2005; Steffen, 2011) , a retrenchment of the social protection system (Bleses and Seeleib-Kaiser, 2004) , a rise in women's labour market participation (Crößmann et al., 2018, Keller and Kahle, 2018) , and a significant increase in temporary employment (Eurostat, 2022; OECD, 2020) . These structural changes are reflected in an increasingly 'dualised' labour market, with marked differences in the employment conditions and social protection of 'labour market insiders' in standard employment and 'labour market outsiders' in non-standard work (Betthäuser, 2017; Brady and Biegert, 2017; Emmenegger et al., 2012) . This growing contrast between people in standard employment and those in non-standard work may be reflected in a gap in the educational and life chances of the children of these two groups.

Germany has a highly stratified education system, which separates children into vocational or academic school tracks age 10-11. The academic school track prepares children for a university education, while vocational tracks prepare children for entering the labour market or pursuing further vocational training at the post-secondary level. Accordingly, children's educational track is known to shape their future educational trajectory, labour market career, and life course (Müller, Steinmann and Ell, 1998) . For instance, women and men who complete a vocational training programme in Germany earn 13 percent and 15 percent less, respectively, compared to women and men who complete a Bachelor Degree (Neugebauer and Weiss, 2018) . Considering this, the empirical analyses in this paper focus on children's school track at the lower-secondary level as the main outcome of interest.

Partly due to the highly stratified education system, the relationship between children's family background and their educational attainment is particularly strong in Germany by international comparison (Breen and Müller, 2020; Müller and Pollak 2010) . Children from more disadvantaged social backgrounds disproportionately attend a vocational school track, both because they tend to perform less well than children from more advantaged backgrounds at the end of primary education and because their parents are less likely to enrol them into the academic school track (Neugebauer et al. 2013) . Considering the highly stratified German education system, one may expect that the link between parental non-standard work and children's education is more pronounced in Germany than in contexts where education systems are less stratified.

Parental temporary contracts, non-standard work schedules and children's education

The sociological and psychological literature on child development highlights the importance of different types of parental resources for children's development and educational success, including economic resources, psychological and socio-cultural resources, educational resources, and time (see, e.g., Brooks-Gunn et al., 1995; Bukodi and Goldthorpe, 2013) .

Parental temporary employment can be expected to influence children's education mainly through parents' economic insecurity and psychological resources. While the level of income varies widely for people in temporary employment, they are more likely to experience future unemployment and associated income loss, which is exacerbated by their reduced access to unemployment insurance and social benefits compared to people on permanent employment contracts (Betthäuser, 2017; Emmenegger et al., 2012 ). This economic insecurity may limit parents' ability and willingness to support children enrolling in academic school tracks, such as the Gymnasium in Germany, which requires relatively long-lasting financial support from parents. By contrast, the shorter educational pathway of vocational training allows children to become economically independent sooner and to financially contribute to the household.

In part due to their economic insecurity, individuals in temporary employment are more likely to report physical ill-health and reduced psychological wellbeing compared to permanent employees (Inanc, 2020; Virtanen et al., 2005) . In turn, the reduced health and wellbeing of parents in temporary employment could affect their ability to support their children's emotional and cognitive development through child-centred parenting (e.g. De Graaf, De Graaf, and Kraaykamp, 2000; Farkas, 2003) . Moreover, lower health and wellbeing may make it more difficult for parents on temporary contracts to help with homework, to attend parent-teacher meetings, and to monitor their child's progress in school (Bratti and Mendola, 2014; Murray et al., 2006) . Considering that conflicts between parents and marital dysfunction are more prevalent in families with temporary work (Kalleberg, 2018; Nolan et al., 2000) , the negative implications for parents' mental health and wellbeing may further manifest in an unstable home learning environment for children.

Based on the above considerations, we hypothesize that (H1) parental temporary employment is negatively associated with children's educational attainment. This association is likely to be particularly strong for children of parents who have an employment contract that is shorter than one year, which can be expected to have particularly severe consequences for parents' economic security as well as their mental health and wellbeing. As discussed in further detail below, we therefore differentiate between long and short temporary contracts in all our analyses.

Non-standard work schedules can be expected to affect children's education by altering the amount of time parents can spend with their children when they are out of school. Working evening shifts may prevent parents from being present for young children's bedtime routines and from reading bedtime stories to them, which has been shown to benefit children's emotional and cognitive development (e.g., Barone et al., 2019; Mindell and Williamson, 2018) . Similarly, parents who work weekends may be unavailable for joint extracurricular activities, such as playing sports or going to the museum or theatre, which are expected to foster children's development and educational success (Hsin and Felfe, 2014; Lareau, 2003) . Importantly, evening and weekend work is also likely to limit the time and energy that parents can devote to supporting their children with their homework and learning, provide them with guidance on educational decisions, and attend parent-teacher meetings (Gracia and García-Román, 2018; Wight, Raley, and Bianchi, 2008) .

Aside from its effect on the time parents can spend with their children, working on evenings and weekends may also cause physical and psychological strain. Individuals who frequently work evenings more often report chronic health conditions, sleep deprivation, neurotic disorders, and depressive symptoms (Kantermann et al., 2010; Totterdell, 2005; Vogel et al., 2012; Perry-Jenkins et al., 2007) . As noted above, lower parental health and wellbeing can interfere with parents' capacity to focus on their children's needs and development. Indeed, working evenings has been found to be associated with harsh and strict parenting practices, which in turn are linked to increased behavioural problems among children (Kaiser, Li, and Pollmann-Schult, 2019) . Studies also report negative consequences of non-standard work schedules for family cohesion and stability (Chait Barnett, Gareis, and Brennan, 2008; Davis et al., 2008; Kalil, Ziol-Guest, and Levin Epstein, 2010; Liu et al., 2011; Schneider and Harknett, 2019) , which might further affect the wellbeing, development, and learning of children. In light of this, our second hypothesis (H2) is that parents' evening and weekend work is negatively associated with children's educational attainment. However, it is also conceivable that non-standard work schedules enable dual-earner couples to arrange their work in ways that allow them to spend more time with their children (Täht and Mills, 2012) , which may benefit children's development and educational attainment.

In Germany, as in other European countries, mothers still spend substantially more time than fathers caring for children and supporting them with homework and extracurricular activities (BFSFJ, 2015; Schober and Zoch, 2019; Zoch, Bächmann, and Vicari, 2020) . In light of this, our third hypothesis (H3) is that the association between parents' non-standard work and children's educational chances is more pronounced for mothers than for fathers. For instance, mothers' psychological and physical strain associated with temporary contracts and difficulties harmonizing non-standard work schedules with children's school schedules are particularly likely to affect children's education, given that mothers continue to be the primary caregivers.

Data and variables

We use data from the German Microcensus waves collected between 2012 and 2019 3 . The Microcensus is Germany's largest household survey and contains detailed information on the type and length of individuals' employment contracts, their work schedules, and their children' school track. Each year, the German Microcensus replaces 25 percent of the sample of respondents. Accordingly, respondents remain in the sample for up to four consecutive years. Based on this feature, two longitudinal datasets are available that allow researchers to trace respondents across the data-collection rounds 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, and across the rounds 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 . For our analyses, we combine these two longitudinal datasets, which allow us to observe the transition to secondary school and the school track of children in the relevant age range (children generally transition to secondary education at age 10-11). This group of children constitutes our analytical sample (mean age = 10.8 years; N = 9,978). Importantly, the two longitudinal datasets also allows us to observe all relevant parental characteristics in the year before children transition to different school tracks at the secondary level. Given that the Microcensus only collects information on people living in the sampled households at the time of the survey, our analysis focuses on households in which both parents are present 4 . Since participation in the survey is compulsory by law, unit and item non-response are both very low. We therefore exclude missing observations by listwise deletion.

The focal outcome variable of our study is children's school track at the beginning of secondary school. As noted, the academic track (Gymnasium) allows children to complete the qualification necessary to enrol in university, while children who complete a vocational track (Hauptschule or Realschule) generally go on to enrol in vocational training programmes. Whether children complete the academic track or not thus has substantial implications for their future educational trajectory, labour market career, and life course (Müller, Steinmann and Ell, 1998) . Accordingly, we measure children's school track with a binary variable indicating whether a child is in the academic track (coded as 1) or in one of the two vocational tracks (coded as 0). 5 In our sample, about 60 percent of all children attend the academic track.

To examine the association between temporary employment and children's school track, we generate a categorical variable for mother's and father's employment status, respectively. This variable differentiates between mothers and fathers who are (1) employers or self-employed, (2) employed on a permanent contract, (3) employed on a temporary contract that is longer than one year, (4) employed on a temporary contract that is one year or shorter, (5) unemployed or (6) inactive. We use parents' who are employed on a permanent contract as the reference category.

Regarding parents' work schedules, we differentiate between individuals who (1) never, (2) sometimes, (3) regularly or (4) always work in the evening (between 6pm and 11pm) or on Saturdays, respectively. 6 We use the parents never working evenings / Saturdays as the reference category. The distribution of mothers' and fathers' employment statuses and work schedules will be discussed in further detail in the next section.

We account for the following parental and household characteristics that may confound the association between children's educational track and mother's and father's non-standard work: both parents' age, the child's migration background, the overall number of children below age 17 in the household, net household income, parents' weekly working hours, parents' social class, and parent's educational attainment. Table 1 summarizes the distribution of these additional covariates.

The prevalence of parental temporary contracts, evening work, and Saturday work

The first aim of our study is to obtain population-level estimates of the prevalence and concentration of parental temporary employment and non-standard work schedules in households with children in Germany. Table 2 cross-tabulates mother's and father's employment status and shows the share of children in each resulting combination of parental employment status. As highlighted by the grey shaded areas, there is a sizable share of children whose mother or father is employed on a temporary contract (4.21 percent and 3.13 per cent, respectively). Few children (0.33 percent) live in households in which both parents have a temporary contract. More detailed analyses show that for both mothers and fathers, short temporary contracts of less than one year are more common than longer temporary contracts (see Table A1 in the Online Supplement). Examples of the most common occupations with short temporary contracts are scouts, sales personnel, care workers, secretaries and academics for mothers, and lorry drivers, assembly line workers, and academics for fathers. 7 Table 3 shows the share of children according to mother's and father's frequency of working during evenings. 8 As highlighted by the grey shaded areas in Table 3 , a large share of children have a mother or father who regularly or always works during evenings (12.46 percent and 28.02 percent, respectively). A sizable share of children (5.21 percent) live in households in which both parents regularly or always work during evenings.

Table 4 shows the share of children according to mother's and father's frequency of working on Saturdays. 9 As highlighted by the grey shade in Table 4 , The most common occupations of people with non-standard work schedules are similar for evening and Saturday work, which include nurses, shop sales assistants, scouts, and waiters for mothers, and managing directors, machine operators, shop sales assistants, and truck and lorry drivers for fathers.

Most children whose mother regularly or always works evenings or Saturdays either live with a father who also regularly or always works evenings or Saturdays or with a father who never works evenings or Saturdays (see Table 3 and Table 4 ). This suggests a polarization of households, in which potentially negative consequences of maternal temporary employment or non-standard work schedules may either be compensated by a father with a standard work schedule or aggravated by the father having a non-standard work schedule as well.

Table 5 shows different constellations of temporary employment and non-standard work schedules among different household types. This table is based on two binary measures. The first measure indicates whether or not mothers and fathers have a temporary contract. The second measure indicates whether or not mothers and fathers regularly or always work evenings or Saturdays. Households in which the mother and/or the father is not employed are labelled accordingly. Household types are numbered (see far left column) and are ordered according to the proportion of children living in the respective household type.

The top row of Table 5 shows that 33.97 percent of children live in households in which both parents are permanently employed and have standard work-schedules. Importantly, adding up the household types in which at least one parent has a short temporary contract or a nonstandard work schedule, we find that 48.51 percent of children live in such households. In other words, half of all children in Germany have at least one parent with a non-standard contract or work-schedule. However, households with a high concertation of non-standard work -in which both parents are in non-standard work, or in which the mother or the father has both a nonstandard contract and a non-standard work schedule -are relatively rare. 10 An exception are households in which both the mother and the father regularly or always work during evenings or on Saturdays (8.81 percent, see household type 5).

The association between parents' non-standard work and children's education

To examine the association between children's education and parents' non-standard contracts and schedules, we estimate linear probability models 11 and regress our binary measure of children's school track on mother's and father's employment status, frequency of working during evenings and Saturdays, and all control variables. The presented associations are therefore net of parental education, income, social class, and family socio-demographic characteristics (see Table A4 for the full model). Given that several children may be observed within one household, we cluster standard errors at the household level. Overall, we find few associations between parent's nonstandard work and children's school track net of controls, with the exception of mother's always working on evenings and Saturdays, which is associated with a lower probability of children attending the academic school track.

Parents' temporary contracts and children's school track

Figure 1A depicts the association between children's school track and parents' temporary employment. The results suggest that having a mother or father with a temporary contract is not associated with a lower probability of being in the academic school track. This is the case independently of whether temporary contracts are longer or shorter than one year. Thus, we find no evidence in support of hypothesis (H1) that parental temporary employment is negatively associated with children's educational attainment.

Parents' evening work, Saturday work, and children's school track

Figure 1B shows the association between children's school track and mothers' and fathers' frequency of working between 6pm and 11pm. In line with hypothesis (H2), children whose mother always works during this time of day are 5.5 percentage points less likely to be in the academic track than children whose mother never works in the evening. However, we find no association between mothers sometimes or regularly working during evenings and children's school track. We also find no association between fathers working evenings and children's school track. Notes: Association between children's school track and mothers' and fathers' (A) employment contract, (B) frequency of working evenings, and (C) frequency of working Saturdays. Point estimates show coefficients from linear probability model, regressing the dependent variable (children's probability of attending the academic school track [coded 1] as opposed to a vocational school track [coded 0]) on the full set of independent and control variables. For the full model see Table 5. 95% Confidence Intervals shown. N = 9,978.

Figure 1C shows that children whose mother always works on Saturdays are 6.4 percentage points less likely to be in the academic track than children whose mother never works on Saturdays, providing further evidence in support of hypothesis (H2). As is the case for mothers' evening work, mothers sometimes or regularly working on Saturdays is not associated with children's school track.

Similar to the results for parental evening work, we do not find a substantively significant association between the probability of children being in the academic track and fathers working on Saturdays. While there is some association between the category of fathers sometimes working on Saturdays and children's school track, this association is substantively very small (2.5 percent). There is thus some indication that the association between parents' non-standard work schedules and children's school track is stronger for mothers than for fathers. However, since the difference in the coefficients for mothers and fathers is not statistically significant, we do not have conclusive evidence concerning hypothesis (H3) that the association between parents' non-standard work and children's educational chances is more pronounced for mothers than for fathers.

Discussion and conclusion

The increasing prevalence of non-standard work and its adverse consequences on workers in such positions are well documented. However, to date we still know little about how many children grow up in households in which one or both parents are in non-standard work and how this is associated with children's educational chances. This is true particularly for the European context, as much of the existing literature on non-standard work focuses on the United States. We argue that examining the role of parental non-standard work in the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage may become increasingly important for understanding how changing labour markets reshape the opportunity structure for children from disadvantaged parental backgrounds.

Our study makes three main empirical contributions. First, we show the prevalence and concentration of non-standard work in households with children in lower-secondary school in Germany. Importantly, in about half of these households, at least one parent has a short temporary contract or regularly works evenings or Saturdays. However, households with a high concertation of non-standard work are relatively rare, as generally only one parent is in non-standard work, and as parents tend to have either a non-standard work schedule or a non-standard contract. An exception are households in which both the mother and the father regularly or always work during evenings or on Saturdays (this is the case for 8.81 percent of households).

Second, we examine the link between parents' temporary employment and children's educational attainment. We find no evidence that parents temporary employment is associated with children's school track, once other socio-demographic factors are controlled for. This finding is surprising, considering the existing evidence on the adverse consequences of temporary employment for peoples' economic security (Gash and Inanc, 2013; McGovern, Smeaton, and Hill, 2004) , physical health (Virtanen et al., 2005; Benach et al., 2014) and mental health (Inanc, 2020) and the known effects of parental stress and ill-health on children's development and educational attainment (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1995; Shonkoff et al., 2012) . A potential explanation could be that despite the dualized nature of the German labour market (Emmenegger et al., 2012) , the German social security system buffers the negative effects of temporary employment on peoples' economic insecurity more than is the case for the 'liberal' social security system of the United States and the United Kingdom, where much of the existing evidence on the adverse consequences of temporary employment originates.

Third, unlike temporary work, we find that children whose mothers report always working on evenings or Saturdays have a substantively and statistically significantly lower probability of entering the academic track (5.5. and 6.4 percentage points, respectively), net of sociodemographic controls. By contrast, moderate evening or Saturday work, even if it occurs regularly is no associated with children's school track. A possible explanation of this finding is that the strain of always working evenings or Saturdays may affect mothers' time and ability to support their children's learning progress, while mothers may be better able to combine supporting their children with working evenings or Saturdays occasionally or regularly on specific days of the week. It could also be the case that fathers are able and willing to compensate for mothers being less involved in children's learning progress when mothers work evenings or Saturdays occasionally or regularly on specific days of the week, but not when mothers always work during evenings or Saturdays.

Finally, our results show no systematic association between fathers' non-standard work schedules and children's school track. This provides some indication that the association between parents' non-standard work and children's educational chances is more pronounced for mothers than for fathers. This is in line with our expectation that the association between children's school track and parents' non-standard schedules is more pronounced for mothers than for fathers, given that mothers still spend substantially more time than fathers caring for children and supporting them with homework and extracurricular activities (Trappe et al., 2015) . However, given that the differences between the coefficients for mothers' and fathers' non-standard employment is not statistically significant, this evidence is not conclusive and calls for future research on the gender dynamics of parental non-standard work and children's educational attainment.

Most of the existing evidence on the association between parental non-standard work and child outcomes focuses on the United States. Our study suggests that parental non-standard work is prevalent also in European societies, but the consequences of non-standard work may vary across geographic contexts. Given the rise of non-standard work across European societies (Allmendinger, Hipp, and Stuth, 2013; Eurostat, 2022; OECD, 2020) and the prominence of informal work in low-and middle-income countries (ILO, 2018) , future research should look beyond the US to document the prevalence of non-standard work among families with children and examine its consequences for children's educational and life chances in different societies.

Our findings should be interpreted in the context of two main limitations. The Microcensus is the only data source in Germany that provides sufficient case numbers and has sufficiently detailed information on parents' employment conditions to map constellations of both parents' non-standard work within householdss and to conduct meaningful analyses of the association between parents' non-standard work and children's educational attainment. However, while we control for a range of potential confounders, our analyses do not permit a causal interpretation, and we cannot rule out confounding by unobserved characteristics of parents in non-standard work. Similarly, the available data limit our ability to test our theoretical expectations with respect to the specific mechanisms that mediate or moderate the association between parents' non-standard work and children's educational attainment. Considering that the results presented in this paper are in line with existing research that finds an association between parental nonstandard work and children's physical and psychological wellbeing, behavioral problems, and cognitive ability (see, e.g., Han, 2008; Han, Miller, and Waldfogel, 2010; Han and Fox, 2011; Kaiser, Li, and Pollmann-Schult, 2019; Strazdins et al., 2006) , these factors may play a role in mediating the association between mothers' non-standard work schedules and children's education that we observe.

To move the analyses into a more causal direction, one fruitful avenue for future research could be to investigate the individual-level mechanisms that account for the association between mothers' non-standard work schedules and children's educational attainment. More specifically, it would be important to disentangle the role of parental time with children, as well as parents' physical and psychological health as potential factors mediating this association. This could be done with detailed household-level time-use data. A related but distinct issue worth investigating is whether and how being in non-standard employment and becoming a parent are causally linked.

Our divergent findings concerning the association between children's school track and different aspects of parents' non-standard work highlight the importance of disaggregating 'nonstandard work' into its specific components. Similarly, our findings of an association between children's school track and parents' non-standard work schedules for mothers but not for fathers suggests that differentiating between mothers' and fathers' employment conditions may reveal gender-specific patters that would be overlooked when using composite measures of non-standard work at the family level or considering only one parent's employment conditions.

Future research should examine how different constellations and concentrations of mothers and fathers non-standard work affect children's educational chances, and how this varies across countries. Given the relatively small share of children in households in which both the mother and the father are in non-standard work, or in which mothers and fathers have both a non-standard work schedule and a non-standard contract, this requires working with register data or large survey samples that contain sufficient observations of such households while also allowing for researchers to observe parents' employment conditions prior to key educational transitions of children.

Our study shines a spotlight on what is likely to become an increasingly important challenge for policy makers to address. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, the share of people with temporary contracts and non-standard work schedules will likely continue to grow. Demand for labour is likely to increase in sectors where non-standard schedules are common, such as the medical and care sector. In Germany, a sizeable number of employees have left sectors that were in low demand during the pandemic, such as tourism, and have moved into sectors that were classified as 'essential occupations', such as the medical and care sector, social work, logistics, food production, and retail (Jansen and Risius, 2022) . Facing increasing uncertainty in the context of major challenges, such as the energy transition and global supply chain disruptions, employers may be more intent on hiring employees on temporary contracts. Moreover, the dramatic increase in remote working during the pandemic may lead to a further blending of work and private life and accelerate the rise of non-standard work schedules (see Abendroth et al., 2022) , with uncertain consequences for the psychological and physical health of workers and their children. Researchers and policy makers should pay close attention to how changing labour markets affect the wellbeing, development, and education of children from parents in non-standard work.

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