The Time Use of Mothers in the United States at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Ch 1 - Introduction

1 1 Introduction One point of consensus regarding young children is that they consume a substantial portion of the time in a parent’s day. Newborn babies must be cared for 24 hours a day. Yes, infants sleep, but the sleep is unpredictable and intermittent. As they age over those first few years, the sleep becomes more predictable, but they still need a caregiver’s attention when awake. Young children still require a high level of adult attention. They can play by themselves for short periods of time, but the caregiver must be alert and on call. Where does this time devoted to young children come from? Without a doubt, parents reallocate their time use to accommodate the caregiving demands of young children. They can also contract out some of that time to other family members or paid care providers. Mothers and fathers can take turns caring for children, or one can take primary responsibility for caregiving. How families accommodate the time demands of young children has broad implications for overall time choices because time devoted to caregiving necessarily is time not devoted to other activities (with the exception of multitasking). Confronted with caregiving needs, we can work less in paid employment, study less, do less housework, have less leisure, or sleep less. If we pay for part of the caregiving, we will have less money for other goods and services. These choices are perfect examples of what economists mean when they talk about trade-offs. We trade off one time use for another, and very literally, we trade time for money. This book focuses on the time use of mothers of preteenaged children in the United States from 2003 to 2006. We explore how mothers at the start of the twenty-first century are using their time in order to better understand their lives, the lives of their partners, and the lives of their children. Differences in the time choices American mothers make will have important implications for their own well-being and the wellbeing of family members. The study of maternal time use is hugely important because of the relationship between quality caregiving and 2 Connelly and Kimmel child well-being. Additionally, employers looking for new labor pools are also affected by the time use choices of mothers of young children because 60 percent of American mothers with young children are employed. Employers may want to cajole more mothers into the labor market or change the work hours for those women already in the labor market. The time choices of mothers in the United States also affect policymakers’thinking about things such as educational policy, the role that taxes play in the allocation of time between paid and unpaid activities , and possible expansion of publicly funded preschool. The analysis provided in this book is possible because of the availability of a new, nationally representative data source that records the time use of persons in the United States over age 15. The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which has been administered annually since 2003, provides large sample sizes and a full set of demographic characteristics , allowing social science researchers a better view of time use in the United States than has ever been available. Before the ATUS, researchers interested in time use of women in the United States had only a few limited time use surveys available. Book oVeRVIeW In Chapter 2, we seek to answer the broad question of how mothers in the United States spend their time. More specifically, we examine the correlation between motherhood and leisure time, and we also consider whether mothers who work longer hours for pay spend less time with their children. Throughout the book, we distinguish between time use on weekends and weekdays because the two are substantively different. We also consider subgroups of mothers based on the age of their youngest child, marital status, and employment status. The age of a mother’s youngest child is a particularly important determinant of time use due to the high demands young children place on caregivers’ time. We do not distinguish between mothers, stepmothers, or adoptive mothers; instead, we define as mothers all those women coresiding with dependent children under the age of 13. Nor do we distinguish between married mothers with husbands present and cohabiting mothers; we refer to both groups as married mothers. Later in this chapter, we compare Introduction 3 mothers’ time use to that of women who are...