Focus On Your Children - Interesting NYT Article
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on
October 17th, 2006
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A few months ago I wrote a post about how much time parents spend with their children. It was based on a UK study and the results showed that parents who work full-time spend an average of 19 minutes a day caring for their children. Pretty pathetic. New York Times has an interesting article out today about a similar study in the US. It's titled "Single And Married Parents Spending More Time With Their Children" (free registration required). It looks at differences in parental behavior during the past 40 years with a special focus on how parents divide their time between children, work, and housework. The results are surprising to me and shows that mothers are spending more time today with their children than 40 years ago despite having a much more prominent role in the work force.
Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on analysis of thousands of personal diaries.
As you know, anything can be proved with statistics but I see no reason to not believe the findings in the article which actually come from a book by the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Association titled "Changing Rhythms of American Family Life". It makes me very happy to see parents focusing more on the children and I hope that this trend continues in the future. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of parents spending time with their children at a young age not only because it's fun, also because I think the long term positive effects are enormous.
I'm really proud of the women who seem to have kicked their husbands in the ass order to help out more at home and women are now an important asset for the workforce. Women's role in society was sadly very different 40 years ago and think this trend is great both for women and families. And of course also society and companies. They still do twice as much housework as the men but the total amount of work performed turns out to be roughly equal.
The researchers found that “women still do twice as much housework and child care as men” in two-parent families. But they said that total hours of work by mothers and fathers were roughly equal, when they counted paid and unpaid work.
Fathers have also done a good job with the children and now spend more than twice as much time with their children as 40 years ago. As I mentioned above I think the findings are a bit surprising and the authors of the book seem to have a similar feeling.
“It seems reasonable to expect that parental investment in child-rearing would have declined” since 1965, when 60 percent of all children lived in families with a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother. Only about 30 percent of children now live in such families. With more mothers in paid jobs, many policy makers have assumed that parents must have less time to interact with their children.
If you read through the article you'll find that women especially have substituted housework for paid work at an almost equal rate. I guess some are focusing a bit less on keeping the home spotless and surely also use more paid help at home, like a cleaning lady. My personal impression of the statistics in the article are perhaps a bit different than most. Although I find the progress made during the years very positive for both men and women, I'm shocked over how little time the parents spend with their children. Women spend an average of 13 hours a week on childcare and men 7 hours. Although that's higher than 40 years ago, especially for men, I find the numbers very low. Looking at my own family situation the number would look dramatically different. Of course it helps that my wife has chosen not to work, we really don't need the money, so her numbers with the children would be many times the average number of 13 in the article. My own numbers with the children would probably be something like 30 hours a week doing stuff with the kids, compared to the average of 13 in the article. And I still have a very demanding job but good hours and short commute. Spending time with the kids can be tough when you just want to kick back and have a bottle of wine but I feel really strongly about the benefits. Not only the current ones but also the positive effects this will have when my kids are teenagers or grownups. I'm a father of two small children and I could be wrong but I'll continue to stick with my theory since it's worked really well so far. I feel that if I can discuss everything with my children at an early age, and have their trust, the teenage years will be less difficult to handle. But trust is often hard earned and requires tons of time and effort. When someone writes a similar article in twenty years I hope that the numbers are dramatically higher and I'm fairly confident this will have a positive effect on our kids.
How can parents manage to spend more time with their children even though they are working longer hours? The authors have a few explanations:
– Many couples delay having children to “a point later in life when they want to spend time with those children.” People who are uninterested in raising children can “opt out of parenting altogether,” by using birth control.– Families are smaller today than in 1965, and parents are more affluent, so they can invest more time and money in each child.
– Social norms and expectations have changed, prompting parents to make “greater and greater investments in child-rearing.” As couples have fewer children, they feel “pressure to rear a perfect child.”
– Many parents feel they need to keep a closer eye on their children because of concerns about crime, school violence, child abduction and abuse.
Is there a possible downside with spending more time with the children? I would say no but I can imagine a possible of less than desirable scenarios. If you're spending time with the kids because you have to but don't really want to can be one such situation. Being "hungry" and focused while interacting with your little ones is very important. You can still be a crappy parent even though you log lots of hours with your children. I like to spend some time away from the kids on a regular basis. An hour here and there will do the trick and keeps me focused and interested in what they are doing. Another scenario would be parents who focus too much on their children and sacrifice financial benefits and career. I doubt this is a common problem and I think most families in this situation have made deliberate choice and look at children as their number one priority.
What's your impression of the article? Does the study seem reasonable? I'm especially interested in how you feel about your own family situation. Is your family moving in the same direction, slowly spending more time with the kids, even though you're still working hard? Or do you still feel like housework totally consumes you and your family?
I think I personally have the work/family thing about right. but I’d be the first to admit that I’m lucky.
I work full time, but condenced hours, so I have four days off a week. I try to spend at least three of those days with my daughter, and alow myself one day for me. On my self-day I tend to do quite a bit of housework - which I can enjoy as I have the whole place to myself and can listen to my music loud ect. The downside to it is that because I work shifts my wife and my days off frequently don’t coincide. Also we pay for regular nursery days and frequently take her out in order to spend time with us.
Still, all in all i think we have a good deal.
I think one of the things that has changed in the last 40 years is society’s attitudes towards children. There used to be a strong “seen, not heard” mentality towards kids. Kids were expected to entertain themselves, often playing outside all day. Now parents do keep a closer eye on their children because of potential dangers, but also becuase they enjoy raising/spending time with their kids. Having children is no longer just something married people “are supposed to do”, but a conscious choice.
As for housework, I spend way less time cleaning than I do with my son. That’s what cleaning services are for. But I probably spend an equal amount of time between work and time with my son. Granted I work from home so we’re still together, but at those moments he’s doing his own thing (playing with toys, etc.) and I’m doing mine.
Geez, we both wrote about this article huh? I should have know. :) Then all I would have had to do was point to yours ;)
Our home seems to be following exactly the way it was spelled out in the article. I do far more around the house than my father or grandfather did. I spend far more time with my daughter on a daily basis. And yes other things have suffered because of it. I don’t get to my “Mr. Fixit” projects anywhere near as quickly as I would like. While we have a nice home, and we try to keep it clean, we are nowhere near my mother’s level of things. There are days that, the pile of mail is going to sit there, or perhaps we don’t take down and dust every knick knack as often. But our trade-off is doing the best we can for our daughter, and we are happy with those trade-offs.
Oct 31st, 2006 at 1:33 pm
[…] Posted on Tuesday 31 October 2006 This week is national work-life balance week in Denmark. For Scandinavian countries, combining work and life in a successful way is almost an obsession. They have long ago realized that it's possible to combine career with family and children. Alex over at Positive Sharing is posting stuff all week with a special focus on combining work and life. If you haven't checked out his site before you should browse through his many articles. His got tons on useful tips of how to make life and work more effective, fun, and meaningful. It's not wonder he calls himself CHO, "Chief Happiness Officer". His site reminds me a bit of the bright Steve Pavlina and his blog about "personal development for smart people". The question of a quality life is constantly attracting more attention. Having children is the easy part, the tough part is to make time to see them and the spouse while still enjoying work and getting paid well. My multicultural life has given me a good look at how enormously difficult it is to fit all the pieces of the puzzle. Children, health, friends, and hobbies are rarely the main worries. Money and time are in my opinion the main concerns for every family. But in the end it's all about how you integrate the different pieces and what's high priority. How many of you feel like you have an employer who is supportive of family, a satisfying job which gives you a paycheck enough for all your needs, plenty of vacation (at least 5 weeks), and enough time for everyday life with spouse and children? I'm willing to bet there is plenty of room for improvement. It's almost impossible to combine work and life successfully unless your employer and country makes it a priority. Before I had children I never thought about this kind of stuff. I thought it was stupid. But now I realize that being able to combine it all is not only difficult but it's a also a must if you want to live a happy life. In most, but not all, countries the man unfortunately works more and this means that fathers get to spend far less time with their children. I blogged earlier about the UK where a parent spends an average of 19 minutes a day with their children. I would call that a horrible integration of work and family. Parents in U.S. spend more time with their children now than earlier which I discussed here. It's mostly the women who do less housework and instead do more paid work but also spend more time with the children. But I still think the integration of work and life is incredibly poor. Living in Sweden for almost four years have given me a wake-up call over how well the work-life balance can be combined. Paid parental leave is the main ingredient but the other benefits are also incredible. Most countries could duplicate parts of the system, it's all a question about priorities. I was really happy with the following comment left one day by one of my readers while discussing family and work […]