Parents’ work schedules and time spent with children

ABSTRACT

This paper adds to the growing body of research on the overlap between work and family by investigating the relationship between attributes of work schedules for parents and the amount of time they spend with their children. Nationally representative time diary data from the American Time Use Survey is used to calculate the amount of time parents spend with children on a random day, and these data are merged with the CPS Work Schedules Supplement which provides information on the respondent’s usual work schedule, such as having a flexible schedule, variable start and stop times, working from home, or a day schedule. The results show that though some work schedule attributes have little influence on the amount of time parents spend with children, certain aspects of the timing of work are related to the total time parents spend with their children. The attributes of work schedules are also found to be associated with the amount of time spent in specific activities with children.

ABSTRACTO

Este artículo se suma al creciente interés de investigación sobre la conciliación entre trabajo y familia mediante la investigación de la relación entre los atributos de los horarios de trabajo para los padres y la cantidad de tiempo que pasan con sus hijos. Se utilizan datos de diarios de uso del tiempo nacionalmente representativos de la ATUS para calcular la suma de tiempo que los padres pasan con los niños en un día al azar y estos datos se fusionan con el Suplemento de Horarios de Trabajo de CPS que proporciona información sobre el horario de trabajo habitual del entrevistado como disponibilidad de horario flexible, inicio y fin de la jornada laboral, posibilidad de trabajo desde casa o horario habitual. Los resultados muestran que aunque algunos atributos de la jornada de trabajo tienen poca influencia en la suma de tiempo que los padres pasan con los niños, ciertos aspectos de la organización diaria trabajo están relacionados con el tiempo total que los padres pasan con sus hijos. Los atributos de la jornada de trabajo también se encuentran asociados con la cantidad de tiempo dedicado a actividades específicas con los niños.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• time use
• work–family balance
• work schedules

PALABRAS CLAVES:

• niños
• tiempo de uso
• equilibrio trabajo-familia
• programas de trabajo

Acknowledgements

Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau, the University of Minnesota, the University of Colorado, or NICHD. The research in this paper does not use any confidential Census Bureau information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Katie R. Genadek is a Research Associate at the University of Colorado – Boulder and an Economist working for the U.S. Census Bureau. She is a labor economist and her research focused on the relationship between work and family for individuals, couples, and parents as well as worker productivity. She has analyzed policy impacts on women’s labor supply and household labor, and she has ongoing research in areas of couples time spent together, the impact of spouses on the work choices, workplace flexibility, productivity, and women’s work in a historical context.

Rachelle Hill is a sociologist with an MPH in Epidemiology. She is currently a Survey Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her research examines how work and family intersect to influence individual well-being across the US population and how social structures produce unequal outcomes in these areas.

Notes

1 We do not include the coefficients for these control variables in our tables, as they have been studied in previous research. However, they are available upon request from the authors.

2 OLS is employed for these analyses rather than Tobit models because very few respondents report spending zero minutes with their children, and OLS models produce less biased estimates than Tobit models in time use analyses (Stewart, 2013).

3 Coefficients from the additional control variables can be obtained from the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Minnesota Population Center [HD041023], the Time Use Data Access System [HD053654], Integrating, Linking, & Disseminating CPS Data [HD067258], and the University of Colorado Population Center [HD066613) all funded through grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).