Abstract
Objectives
To examine how the time parents spent with their children changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
Using nationally representative time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey, parents’ time spent in and location of enriching (direct) and secondary (supervisory) childcare among a sample with at one child under 6 years (N = 2,862) and 6–12 years of age (N = 3,595) from May 2020 to December 2021 were compared to January 2019 to March 2020.
Results
Parents’ time in secondary childcare at home increased substantially. Parents with children under age 6 increased their enriching childcare time, driven by mothers. Low-income parents with children aged 6–12 showed a decrease in enriching time with children, whereas higher-income parents with school-age children showed an increase.
Conclusions for Practice
Parents’ time in supervisory childcare increased substantially, and gender and income disparities in enriching time spent engaged with children grew. Examining parent-child time use patterns is important to understand the pandemic’s effects and can provide insight on how best to support children and families during the recovery.
Significance Statement
What is already known on this subject? The COVID-19 pandemic led to school, childcare program, and business closures, increasing parents’ time at home with their children, particularly among mothers and those working remotely.
What this study adds? This study examined how parents’ supervisory time and direct engagement with children under age 13, and the location where they spent time together, changed during the pandemic, and how these changes varied by child age and family characteristics.
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Data Availability
The American Time Use Survey is publicly available.
Code Availability
Our code is custom to this study and can be made available.
Notes
Respondents may be in both groups if they had children in each of these age categories.
This ATUS measure of secondary childcare has been found to be largely consistent with alternative measures of parental availability but not direct engagement (Stewart & Allard, 2015). Our two parent time use measures exclude parents’ time spent in physical care for children (e.g., feeding, bathing children). While this form of primary childcare constitutes a substantial amount of time spent with young children, these activities are likely to have changed less during the pandemic relative to prior; we focused on changes in parents’ primary childcare in enriching time and secondary childcare time as a proxy for how children’s time directly engaged with adults may have shifted during the pandemic.
Based on categories used in prior research using the ATUS examining the effects of minimum wage policies (see Morrissey, 2023, Review of Economics of the Household: https://link.springer.com/article/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-022-09638-2).
In additional analyses (results available upon request), we controlled for state-level data on monthly COVID-19 case rates and deaths to control for the severity of the pandemic; findings were substantively unchanged.
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The authors are grateful to Sarah Timmerman for research assistance on this manuscript.
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Dr. Morrissey conceptualized and designed the study and drafted and revised the manuscript. Ms. Engel contributed to the conceptual and methodological design, analyzed the data, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors approve of the final manuscript as submitted and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
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Morrissey, T.W., Engel, K. Parent-Child Time During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey. Matern Child Health J 28, 67–75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03777-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03777-3