The Temporal Demands of Parental Child Care: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

Abstract

Most research on parental time devoted to child care is based on survey questions regarding explicit care activities or co-presence of parents and children in the same room, factors clearly relevant to child development. Time spent keeping an eye and/or ear on young children while engaging in other activities deserves attention for a different reason—it represents an even larger constraint on maternal employment. Analysis of pooled time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2004-2019 focuses on an underutilized question that asks respondents when own household children under the age of 13 were “in their care,” and shows that reported parental time likely devoted to supervision parental time likely devoted to supervision exceeds time devoted to active care by a factor of 2.9 and is more negatively related to maternal hours in paid employment. In-your-care time is an important indicator of the opportunity costs of motherhood, especially in low-income households unable to purchase or otherwise unable to obtain “babysitting” assistance.