Editors: A .PDF file of the full report (requires Acrobat or other .PDF file reader to open) is athttp://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/papers/rr01-475.pdf

ANN ARBOR—Despite a sharp increase in the number of dual-career families, today’s children spend more time with their parents than children did two decades ago, according to a University of Michigan study.

The study, forthcoming in Demography, finds that children in two-parent families between the ages of 3 and 12 spent about 31 hours a week with their mothers in 1997, compared to about 25 hours in 1981. The amount of time spent with fathers increased from about 19 to 23 hours a week.

“Contrary to popular belief, the increase in female labor force participation has not led to a decrease in the amount of time children spend with their parents,” says John Sandberg, first author of the article and a sociologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), the world’s largest academic survey and research organization.

“Even though parents, and especially mothers, may be busier than ever, many seem to be managing to fit in more time with their children than an earlier generation of parents did.”

The study, by Sandberg and ISR senior research scientist Sandra Hofferth, is based on a comparison of time diary data from two nationally representative samples of U.S. families, both conducted by the ISR. The 1980 sample included information on 243 children, and the 1997 sample included information on 2,125 children. The children (helped by a parent if necessary) filled out two time diaries, one each for a weekday and a weekend day, describing what they did, with whom they did it, and who was present. The time diaries include activities parents engaged in with children as well as time spent just being in the same room with them.

While the study shows that there have been positive and dramatic increases in children’s time with mothers and with fathers in two-parent families, these changes are not paralleled for children in single-parent families, Sandberg notes. He found that time spent with mothers in single-parent families remained about the same over the period studied—about 21 hours a week.

Sandberg and Hofferth also analyzed how maternal employment affected the amount of time children spent with mothers and fathers. In 1981, U.S. children spent, on average, about 3.5 fewer hours a week with mothers who worked than with mothers who didn’t, he found. In 1997, the difference was about 5.5 hours. But in fact the amount of time children spent with both working and non-working mothers increased over the period studied, so that children whose mothers worked in 1997 spent about the same amount of time with their mothers, on average, as did children whose mothers did not work outside the home in 1981.

Whether a mother was working or not had no significant effect on the amount of time children spent with fathers in 1981 or in 1997, the authors found. However, in families with working moms, children spent considerably more time with dads in 1997 than they did in 1981. “This suggests that fathers may be taking more responsibility for child-care when mothers work,” says Sandberg.

The analysis was funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Data for the 1997 sample was part of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a national study of 2,600 families with children under age 13, funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Education. Funding for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of U.S. men, women and children directed by U-M economist Frank Stafford, comes from the National Science Foundation.

Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world’s oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more information.

http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/papers/rr01-475.pdfDemographyInstitute for Social ResearchSandra HofferthNational Institute for Child Health and Human DevelopmentSurvey of Consumer Attitudes