Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Socio-economic gaps in early development have been found to have persistent effects over a child’s life course, particularly in subsequent schooling achievement (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011).  One potential mechanism is the differences in the quality and time that economically advantaged parents spend with children as compared to economically disadvantaged parents (Guryan, Hurst, & Kearney, 2008; Hart & Risley, 1995; Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013).

This study specifically examines the time that Hispanic mothers and fathers spent with their children relative to non-Hispanic white and black parents. Patterns of time use are compared across types of activities (child enriching activities as compared to other activities) separately for mothers and fathers by racial/ethnic group and by income within racial/ethnic group. Although a higher proportion of Hispanic children are poor they are also more likely to reside in households with stable earnings as compared to their low income peers (Gennetian et al., 2015).  Such stability of earned income might come at the cost of juggling multiple jobs or multiple work shifts and thus less availability of time among parents to spend with children.  This comparably raises questions about who Hispanic children are spending their time with and what types of environments they are in.

The analyses are conducted using data from the 2003-13 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS is a time diary study of a nationally representative sample of Americans (Hofferth, Flood & Sobek 2013). ATUS respondents report on their activities over the 24 -hour period, indicating the type of activity as well as where, when, and with whom it occurred. ATUS sample members are drawn from Current Population Survey (CPS) respondents. Activities are categorized following the rubric by Wang et al. (2014) of seven major categories: time spent with children, paid work, housework, watching television, leisure, sleeping, and other. Women and men 25-60 years old with at least one own child less than 18 years old at the time of time use survey are included in the analytic sample.

Preliminary results show that over the 2003-13 time period Hispanic mothers spent more time in child enriching activities on average than leisure, but not as much as other activities, including paid work and household work; these patterns do not statistically vary by income level (Figure 1).  Whereas low income Hispanic mothers proportionally spend more time in child enriching activities than low income Black mothers, low income white mothers spend proportionally more time than either low income Hispanic or Black mothers (Figure 2).  Low-income Hispanic fathers reported spending more time in paid work and less time in leisure activities compared to low-income Black fathers and White fathers and, as expected, Hispanic mothers spend more time with children than Hispanic fathers (not shown).  Understanding this aspect of family context in light of economic and work pressures, and the ways in which time is allocated, may help child care providers better consider how to support parent engagement and family well-being during early childhood.