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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Family Time Has Grown And Is Now Back To 1970s' Levels

Diane Rehm: Does It Matter How Much Time Parents Spend With Their Kids?


Alan: I am increasingly aware that American conservatives are constitutionally unable to celebrate "good news" IF that news does not coincide with social forms that prevailed in bygone centuries. 

Conservative friends who fret over the decline of the family -- especially "true values conservatives" -- take no comfort in the revelation that "family time has grown" and is now back at 1970s levels.

George McGovern: "The Case For Liberalism, 
A Defense Of The Future Against The Past"

"Do Republicans Do Anything But Piss, Moan, Bitch, Whine?"

The Beatitude That Separates Pope Francis From Prissy, Bitchy "Christians"

The Singularly Slimy Way Conservatives Lie.... 

Just To Moan, Piss, Whine, Bitch
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-singularly-slimy-way-conservatives.html

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts On "Too Pure Principles" And The Collapse Of Conservatism

Surprisingly, Family Time Has Grown

April 5, 2010

Working parents perpetually agonize that they don’t see enough of their children. But a surprising new study finds that mothers and fathers alike are doing a better job than they think, spending far more time with their families than did parents of earlier generations.
The study, by two economists at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes a dozen surveys of how Americans say they use their time, taken at different periods from 1965 to 2007. It reports that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels — and especially those with a college education — has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s. (The findings by the husband-and-wife economist team of Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey appear in a discussion paper presented in March at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington.)
Before 1995, mothers spent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of their children. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week for college-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education.
Although mothers still do most of the parenting, fathers also registered striking gains: to 9.6 hours a week for college-educated men, more than double the pre-1995 rate of 4.5 hours; and to 6.8 hours for other men, up from 3.7, according to an additional analysis by Betsey Stevenson and Dan Sacks, economists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Family researchers say the news should offer relief to guilt-stricken working parents.
“Parents are feeling like they don’t have enough time with their children,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, which conducts research on the work force. “It’s a function of people working so hard, and they are worried they’re shortchanging their children. I’ve never found a group of parents who believe they are spending enough time with their kids.”
Although previous studies have shown increases in parenting time starting in the 1990s, the study by the Rameys is important because it links so many time-use surveys and also breaks the data down by age of the child and education level.
The rise in child-centered time is just one of the ways the American family is changing. Couples are typically waiting longer to get married and begin having children. Divorce rates are dropping with each generation.
And notably, children are no longer so widely viewed as essential to a happy marriage. In 1990, 65 percent of Americans said that children were “very important” to a successful marriage, but by 2007, the number of adults who agreed with that statement had dropped to 41 percent, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
In fact, the surge in parenting time may say more about modern marriage than about modern child care practices, Dr. Stevenson said. She notes that among college-educated parents, two- to two-and-a-half hours of the increased time takes place when both parents are together. “Everybody gets in the car,” she said, “and mom and dad both cheer on the kid.”
That may reflect a rise in what Dr. Stevenson calls the “hedonic marriage,” in which couples share home and work responsibilities so they can spend more time together.
By contrast, couples from earlier generations typically had “specialized” roles that tended to keep them apart — the husband working at a job to support the family, the wife staying home to raise the children.
“We’re seeing a rise in marriages where we’re picking people we like to do activities with,” Dr. Stevenson said. “So it’s not surprising we’re going to see that some of the activities we want do together involve our children.”
So where is the extra time coming from? Women, in particular, are spending less time cooking and cleaning their homes, while men are putting in fewer hours at the office. A 2007 report in The Quarterly Journal of Economics showed that leisure time among men and women surged four to eight hours a week from 1965 to 2003.
Notably, the data in the Ramey study do not count the hours mothers and fathers spend “around” their children — at the dinner table, for example, or in solitary play. Instead, the survey tracks specific activities in which the parent is directly involved in the child’s care.
“It’s taking them to school, helping with homework, bathing them, playing catch with them in the back yard,” said a co-author of the leisure-time paper, Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Those are the activities that have increased over the last 15 to 20 years.”
Dr. Galinsky notes that although working parents typically feel guilty for not spending more time at home, children often have a different reaction. In a landmark study published as “Ask the Children” (Harper, 2000), she asked more than 1,000 children about their “one wish” for their parents. Although parents expected their children would wish for more family time, the children wanted something different.
“Kids were more likely to wish that their parents were less tired and less stressed,” Dr. Galinsky said.
Comments

Catherine Myers April 7, 2010 · 4:38 pm
I love comment #76. There are so many misconceptions about parents and children and time. For over two decades, I’ve been volunteering with the nonprofit organization Family and Home Network (www.familyandhome.org). I’ll be looking more closely at the research; this column seems to have generated more confusion than illumination.
To TPP: Why in the world did you frame this in terms of “working parents”? Quote: “Family researchers say the news should offer relief to guilt-stricken working parents.”
What is your definition of “working parents”?
Ending the blog with the quote from Ellen Galinsky about what children want does a disservice to infants and young children — what they need is generous amounts of their parents’ time and presence.
Janice Badger Nelson RN April 7, 2010 · 6:01 pm
I think some parents are in their children’s lives for all the wrong reasons—not just to play and hang out, not simply to guide, but to control. Some parents seem to want to control every detail of their children’s lives. I try very hard to prevent myself from doing the very same thing. It is hard sometimes.
I agree with the posters who talk about riding their bikes alone or with friends and just hanging out. I do think it made us more independent adults. Of course, I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and there wasn’t the internet or so many reports of predators lurking.
A friend of mine posted on her Facebook page that she and her son and her husband went sled riding this past winter, and her 4 year old said to his dad, “Take this sled, Dad, because you can steer it with one hand. That way you can still look at your phone all of the time.”
Pretty funny. And sad as well. Spending time is not the same as paying attention.
I wonder if any of the increase in the average time spent with chlldren is a result of more mothers staying home, particularly when their children are young. It seems that there has been an increasing trend in this direction, especially for college-educated women with younger children. And that would skew the results.
Oh my goodness — more is NOT always better! One problem that occurs now is that of parents becoming TOO involved in their children’s lives. Parents wh ospend TOO much time with their children are not helping them. Over-involvement can be as detrimental as under-involvement! Parents who are too involved hurt their children’s chances to develop their own wisdom, overcome their own fears or worries, and attain a strong sense of self confidence, among other things.
Sounds like another article meant to make moms feel better about not being there sometimes.
And supported by “studies” to boot!
If you are comfortable with your work and family decisions you don’t need self-serving studies or articles like this one.
Parents are probably spending More Time with children because Unemployment is Way Way Up in the past few years. When X got no job, they stay where? At home
I know college students who, in my classes, text their parents, or who call them several times a day. it seems to me that all the spending time with the kids may be alternatively constructed as over-supervising the kids, and that they lose the ability to be independent. There is a lot to be said for “go outside or go to your room.”!
Re: “I spent Easter morning chasing my 12-year-old around our condo complex with water balloons. I am a 48-year-old single mom with two kids. My parents would NEVER have considered such play!”
You know, there was a time when parents were parents, not trying desperately and childishly to be their children’s “friends”.
I am stunned. Not by the article, so much, but by the comments. Where is all this defensiveness, criticism and judgment coming from? How on earth could a father averaging 9.6 hours a week with his child, or a mother spending 15.9 be considered overparenting? I spend about 10 hours just putting my kids to bed per week. I sure hope my kids don’t end up in therapy, or jail, because of that. Wow.
http://spendmoretimewithyourkids.blogspot.com/ August 14, 2010 · 2:14 pm
Its very important about spending quality time with your children.people need to be more involved with their childrens activitys so children stay out of trouble
Hey, instead of discussing the topic, let’s all put random links after our post.

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