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11 Oct, 2013

Time Management: Pew Research Finds Parents’ Time with Kids More Rewarding Than Paid Work

by Wendy Wang

October 8, 2013 -(Pew Research Centre) There’s no tougher job than being a parent, or so the saying goes. This sentiment seems to be confirmed by a new Pew Research Center analysis of government time use data. Parents find caring for their children to be much more exhausting than the work they do for pay. At the same time, parents find much more meaning in the time they spend with their children than in the time they spend at work.

American parents with children under age 18 find 62% of their child-care experiences “very meaningful,” compared with 36% of paid work-related activities. They also rate 12% of child-care activities “very tiring,” compared with 5% of paid work-related activities.

Parents Find Child Care Meaningful …
… But Also Exhausting
How Moms and Dads Spend  Their Time

These findings are based on an analysis of the new Well-being Module from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Launched by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 2003, the ATUS provides nationally representative estimates of how Americans spend their time. In addition to standard time use questions, the 2010 ATUS included new measures to gauge respondents’ emotional state during various activities. For example, did they feel happy, stressed or tired? How meaningful did they find various activities?

When it comes to feeling happy, time with children also beats time at work. Parents on average report that they are “very happy” in 35% of their child-care activities, compared with 19% of their paid work-related activities. In fact, the happiness level that parents experience during their time caring for children is only slightly lower than it is during their leisure time (41% rated as very happy).

Parents feel somewhat less stressed during their time with children than their time at work. Some 3% of child-care activities are rated as “very stressful,” compared with 5% of paid work activities. Instead, parents feel that they are “not stressed at all” in about half of their child-care activities (52%), compared with 20% of paid work-related activities.

Important gender differences underlie these overall patterns, and the gender differences seem to hold up when the employment status of parents is taken into consideration.1 While mothers and fathers are equally likely to find meaning in the time they spend with their children and in the workplace, when it comes to housework and leisure activities, mothers are more likely than fathers to feel what they do is very meaningful. At the same time, mothers feel more exhausted than fathers in all four of these realms.

Overall, fathers spend significantly more hours each week in paid work than do mothers (40 hours vs. 23 hours, on average), while mothers’ time in unpaid work (child care and housework) is much longer than that of fathers (31 hours per week vs. 17 hours). Fathers have three hours per week more leisure time than mothers do.

When looking at the specific activities that parents engage in, the analyses also suggest that fathers and mothers allocate their time quite differently during similar types of activities. Fathers spend significantly less time than mothers in almost all child-care activities except for playing with children, where the gap is the smallest. Fathers and mothers on average both spend about two hours per week in recreational-type child-care activities.

In the area of housework, fathers spend more time doing household repairs and maintenance (such as vehicles and lawn care) than do mothers (four hours per week vs. one hour), but mothers do much more cooking and cleaning than do fathers (a combined total of 15 hours per week vs. five hours per week).

How Parents Feel about the Way They Spend their Time

Child care is rated as one of the most meaningful activities by parents.2 Parents with children under age 18 find 62% of their child-care experiences “very meaningful,” compared with 43% of housework and 36% of paid work-related activities.

Meanwhile, when asked about their level of tiredness, child care registers as the most exhausting activity for parents. About 12% of child-care activities get a rating of “very tiring,” compared with 7% of housework activities, and 5% of both leisure and paid work-related activities.3

The survey method employed in the American Time Use Survey is often referred to as a “time diary,” as it walks respondents through their previous day (24 hours), records all the activities they did sequentially and how much time they spent in each activity.4 Activities are classified into 17 major time-use categories and more than 400 detailed sub-categories or episodes. For the purpose of this study, we extracted the time that respondents spent in four major areas: paid work, housework, child care and leisure. A list of detailed activities in each area can be found in Appendix 3.

“Very happy” Activities
“Very stressful” Activities

In addition to standard time use questions, the 2010 ATUS included new measures to gauge respondents’ emotional state during various activities. After respondents completed a 24-hour diary, they were asked on a scale of 0 to 6 (where 0 means the respondent did not experience the feeling at all, and 6 means the feeling was very strong), about how they felt during the time they engaged in three randomly selected activities.5 This report analyzes the data at the activity level, and each activity is associated with a rating of feelings by respondents (happy, stressed, tired, and meaningful).

When it comes to feeling happy, time with children ranks high, although not the highest, among the four areas of parents’ time use. Parents feel “very happy” in 35% of their child-care activities and 41% of their leisure activities. Yet taking care of children is much more pleasant than doing housework or paid work: Parents feel very happy during their time in 21% of housework activities and 19% of their work-related activities.

Compared with other daily activities, parents do not seem to experience particularly high levels of stress during the time they are taking care of their children. Only 3% of child-care activities are rated as “very stressful,” compared with 4% of leisure activities, and 5% of work-related activities (housework and paid work). Instead, parents report that they are “not stressed at all” in 52% of child-care activities, compared with 20% of paid work and 37% of housework.

Click here to down the complete report