about time

a fair amount of popular concern and conservative rhetoric over the past 20 years has been devoted to the idea that today's parents spend far less time with their children than their own parents spent with them during their early years in the halcyon days of the 60s and 70s. at one point, william mattox of the family research council, borrowing numbers from time-use diary studies by university of maryland sociologist john robinson, claimed that in 1991 parents spent 40% less time with their kids than they did in 1965. according to a US news & world report article by david whitman (7/1/96, vol. 121, issue 1), this statistic was picked up and used by both the g.h.w. bush and clinton administrations as well as myriad news and popular media outlets for varied political purposes.

sure, this conversation is glossed as a "parental" time deficit, but i think it's useful and necessary to read between the lines here. across the years referred to by mattox--the mid 60s through the early 90s, and beyond--there has been a steady increase in employed mothering in the US. according to current population survey (CPS) data, the breadwinner dad/homemaker mom model that characterizes the mid-century american family in our popular imagination actually only accounted for 57% of families in 1965, and only 21% of families by 2000. dual-earning families in which both moms and dads work full-time increased from 12% of households to 31% of households from 1965 to 2000. even more moms work part-time. it seems that what mattox was really concerned about was not a lack of parental time with children, but a lack of (surprise!), maternal time with children. it's a great set-up for scapegoating employed moms.

the kicker is that mattox was wrong! actually, an error in a book john robinson published in 1977 coupled with mattox's own misunderstanding of data from a later article robinson published in "american demographics" led to the flawed "40% less" figure.

the double kicker is that even more recent time-use diary data* shows that married parents actually spent more time with their kids in 2000 than they did in 1965. in changing rhythms of american family life (2006), suzanne bianchi, john robinson (the very same), and melissa milkie discuss just how this is done. a few interesting key points:

-moms in 2000 did 13 hours less housework per week than moms in 1965 (p. 91)

-reported multi-tasking greatly increased for married moms (from 32 to 64 hours/week), married dads (30 to 59 hours/week) and single moms (30 to 62 hours/week) between 1965 and 2000 (p. 98)

-put more simply, half of parents' waking hours in 2000 were spent doing two or more activities simultaneously (p. 100)

-"pure free time" (not spent in childcare, housework, or "grooming") has declined significantly for married moms (from 33 to 26 hours per week) but not as much for married dads (from 30 to 29 hours per week) (p. 103)

-employed moms in 2000 spent as much time in primary childcare per week as nonemployed moms in 1975 (p. 77)

-for married couples, there was a 26% drop (from 12 hours per week to 9) in alone time spent together from 1975 to 2000 and a drop in 20% of overall time spent together (from 35 to 28 hours per week) (p. 104)

the overall picture they paint is one of busy parents who are not, in fact, cutting back on the time they spend with their children (and one could argue that increasingly more and more time with your kids is needed to be considered a good parent), but readjusting what they do (incorporating kids into leisure activities) or don't do (housework), how they do what they do (responding to work e-mails while the lasagna bakes, folding laundry while singing songs with their preschooler), and with whom they do it (joining a kid-friendly moms group rather than the city parks board) to make more time for the kids.

reviewing all of this stuff today makes me reflect on and be grateful for the way i spent yesterday evening. it had been an unseasonably warm day and after dinner my husband suggested we take a walk around the neighborhood. it was already dark, which i thought made the idea a little funny, but we did it anyway. i'm really glad that we did. it was a warm and breezy evening, there were lots of fallen leaves to shuffle through, we got to see some candlelit jack-o-lanterns, E rode most of the way on her pop's shoulders and reached up to touch the tree branches, our poor neglected dog got a second walk, i had time to talk to my spouse that probably would have evaporated if we were in front of the TV or our laptops, and we got a little exercise to boot. it's only at the end of writing that last sentence that i realize that i'm describing our lovely, simple walk as a multi-tasking event. i'm certainly a product of my culture... and maybe it was multi-tasking, but in the best possible way.

*this is a cool quantitative data gathering method in which a representative sample of american parents work with a researcher to reconstruct a detailed diary of how they spent the previous day.