Child Care Time, Parents' Well-Being, and Gender: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey.

Anne Roeters,Pablo Gracia

doi:10.1007/s10826-016-0416-7

Abstract

This study used data from the ‘Well Being Module’ of the 2010 American Time Use Survey (N = 1699) to analyze how parents experience child care time in terms of meaning and stress levels. Multivariate multilevel regressions showed clear differences by gender and the circumstances of child care activities. Mothers experienced child care time as more stressful than fathers, and fathers as slightly more meaningful. Interactive child care was experienced as more meaningful and less stressful than routine child care, whereas these differences were stronger among fathers than among mothers. Mothers experienced child care with a minor child as highly meaningful, and with an adolescent as particularly stressful. Fathers experienced child care with an infant as highly stressful, and with an offspring in middle childhood as disproportionally meaningful. The spouse’s presence was moderately associated with higher senses of meaning and lower levels of stress during child care, but these differences were modest, and only visible among fathers. Paid work hours increased mothers’ stress levels during child care activities, but reduced fathers’ stress levels. Meanwhile, nonemployed fathers reported child care time as less meaningful than non-employed mothers. Overall, this study has important scientific and practical implications for `understanding the gendered nature of parents’ child care time and well-being.

Highlights

Studying how parents experience child care time is critical to understand parents’ socio-emotional wellbeing
We investigated two central questions to understand the subjective experience of parent–child time: How meaningful child care time was for the parent and which levels of stress parents experienced during child care time
The ‘Well Being Module’ of the 2010 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a survey with a representative sample of American families, provided a unique possibility to investigate these questions. These data allowed us to provide a more global picture of how Americans experience their child care time than in previous related studies, which typically focused on more restricted samples, such as dual-earner middle-class couples (Offer 2014)

Summary

Introduction

Studying how parents experience child care time is critical to understand parents’ socio-emotional wellbeing. Offer (2014) found that mothers disproportionally engage in routine child care, which captures gender inequalities in the division of labor and parents’ wellbeing. The type of child care activity was found to play an important role in parents’ wellbeing. These studies offer relevant information to understand how parents experience child care time

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Results

Conclusion