Beyond intensive mothering: Racial/ethnic variation in maternal time with children.

Despite substantial evidence that racial/ethnic minority communities exhibit distinct mothering practices, research on racial/ethnic differences in how mothers spend time with their children is scant. Using the 2003-2019 American Time Use Survey (N = 44,372), this study documents variations in the amounts of childcare and copresent time spent in various activities with residential children aged 0-17 across White, Black, Latina, and Asian mothers. The results show that racial/ethnic differences in maternal time spent with children are partly due to socioeconomic differences but still exist when these factors are held constant, indicating patterns that reflect each minority community's mothering norms. Compared to mothers in other groups, Black mothers spend more copresent time with children in religious activities, although less in terms of the total amount of time. Latina mothers spend more copresent time with elementary-school-age children while engaging in daily routines. Asian mothers spend more time teaching and eating with elementary-school-age or younger children.

Beyond mothers' time in childcare: Worlds of care and connection in the early life course.

Family scholars examining time spent on children's care focus heavily on mothers' allocations to a specific sphere of active caregiving activities. But children's needs for care and supervision involve connection to others; and many others beyond mothers can and do provide care, especially as children grow. Using a "linked lives" approach that centers relationality, we show how time diaries can illuminate children's time spent in "socially connected" care. Using recent (2014-2019) time diary data from the American and the United Kingdom Time Use Surveys, we examine mothers', children's, and teenagers' days to assess two forms of connected care time. First, results show that in addition to childcare time as traditionally measured by time use studies, mothers spend considerable further time providing connected care through social and community time in which children are included, religious activities with their children present, and mealtime with children. Second, looking from the child's perspective also underscores time in the larger "village" of carers within which children and youth are embedded. Fully two-thirds of 8-14-year-olds' and three-quarters of 15-17-year-olds' waking time is not with mothers-it is spent alone or in social connection to fathers, extended family, teachers, neighbors, and friends. A "linked lives" approach shifts attention to assessing care time in diverse activities with others and to measuring mothers' and children's time in social connections within the larger world. This analytic frame also moves away from maternal determinism to highlight the contours of children's care and social time occurring within the community at large, as well as the roles and responsibilities of those outside of the mother-child dyad across the child's early life course.

Felt deficits in time with children: Individual and contextual factors across 27 European countries.

A sizeable portion of parents say they lack time with children-an important social problem given that time strains link to parental well-being. Extending perspectives on the demands and rewards of parenting beyond the individual level, we provide a contextual-level window onto mothers' and fathers' time strains. Based on data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2016/17 (n = 5,898), we analyze whether parents feel they spend enough time caring for their children using multilevel models. We first observe that country context matters in that perceptions of time only moderately or weakly relate to hours with children across countries, especially for fathers, suggesting varying social expectations across Europe. Second, in multivariate analyses examining micro- and macro-level factors, we show that at the individual level, feeling too little time with children is more frequent among fathers and those who work more hours, even when controlling for estimated weekly hours spent caring for children. At the country level, parents' time strain is higher in countries where employees have less time and place flexibility, typically in Central and Eastern as well as Southern Europe. Gender norms matter as well. Extending contextual perspectives, we argue that how gender-work-family regimes color felt time strain is a promising future research direction.

Beyond childcare: Changes in the amount and types of parent-child time over three decades.

Parents' time with children has increased over the past several decades, according to many scholars. Yet, research predominantly focuses on childcare activities, overlooking the majority of time that parents spend with children. Using time diaries from the 1986-2015 Canadian General Social Survey, we examine trends in the quantity and distribution of parents' childcare time and total co-present time in the company of children, as well as the behavioral or compositional drivers of these trends. Co-present time with children increased sharply since the mid-1980s, by 1 hour per day for fathers and 1.5 hours for mothers. This rise was driven not only by childcare activities, but also parents' time in housework and mothers' time in leisure with children present. Decomposition analyses indicate that changes in parenting behavior primarily explain these increases in co-present time. This study expands knowledge on intensive parenting through a more comprehensive understanding of parents' daily lives with children.

Selon de nombreux chercheurs, le temps que les parents passent avec leurs enfants a augmenté au cours des dernières décennies. Pourtant, la recherche se concentre principalement sur les activités de garde d'enfants, négligeant la majorité du temps que les parents passent avec les enfants. À l'aide d'agendas tirés de l'Enquête sociale générale canadienne de 1986 à 2015, nous examinons les tendances relatives à la quantité et à la répartition du temps passé par les parents à s'occuper des enfants et du temps total de coprésence en compagnie des enfants, ainsi que les facteurs comportementaux ou compositionnels de ces tendances. Le temps de coprésence avec les enfants a fortement augmenté depuis le milieu des années 1980, de 1 heure par jour pour les pères et de 1,5 heure pour les mères. Cette augmentation est due non seulement aux activités de garde d'enfants, mais aussi au temps consacré par les parents aux tâches ménagères et par les mères aux loisirs en présence des enfants. Les analyses de décomposition indiquent que les changements de comportement parental expliquent principalement ces augmentations du temps de coprésence. Cette étude élargit les connaissances sur la parentalité intensive par une compréhension plus complète de la vie quotidienne des parents avec les enfants.

The Division of Domestic Labor before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada: Stagnation versus Shifts in Fathers' Contributions.

The COVID-19 pandemic created rapid, wide-ranging, and significant disruptions to work and family life. Accordingly, these dramatic changes may have reshaped parents' gendered division of labor in the short term. Using data from 1,234 Canadian parents in different-sex relationships, we compare retrospective reports of perceived sharing in how housework and childcare tasks were split prior to the declaration of the pandemic to assessments of equality afterward. Further, we describe perceptions of changes in fathers' engagement in these tasks overall, by respondent gender, and by employment arrangements before and during the pandemic. Results indicate small shifts toward a more equal division of labor in the early "lockdown" months, with increased participation in housework and childcare by fathers, supporting the needs exposure hypothesis. We conclude by discussing gender differences in parents' reports and potential implications for longer term gender equality.

La pandémie COVID-19 a provoqué des perturbations rapides, vastes et importantes dans le travail et la vie de famille. En conséquence, ces changements dramatiques peuvent avoir remodelé la division parentale du travail entre les sexes à court terme. À l'aide de données provenant de 1 234 parents canadiens vivant dans des relations de sexe différent, nous comparons les rapports rétrospectifs sur le partage perçu de la répartition des tâches ménagères et de garde d'enfants avant la déclaration de la pandémie aux évaluations de l'égalité par la suite. En outre, nous décrivons les perceptions des changements dans l'engagement des pères dans ces tâches en général, par sexe des répondants et par conditions d'emploi avant et pendant la pandémie. Les résultats indiquent de petits changements vers une division du travail plus égalitaire au cours des premiers mois de «verrouillage¼, avec une participation accrue des pères aux travaux ménagers et à la garde des enfants, ce qui confirme l'hypothèse d'exposition aux besoins. Nous concluons en discutant des différences entre les sexes dans les rapports des parents et des implications potentielles pour l'égalité entre les sexes à long terme.

Parenthood and Well-Being: A Decade in Review.

Understanding social aspects of parental well-being is vital, because parents' welfare has implications not only for parents themselves but also for child development, fertility, and the overall health of a society. This article provides a critical review of scholarship on parenthood and well-being in advanced economies published from 2010 to 2019. It focuses on the role of social, economic, cultural, and institutional contexts of parenting in influencing adult well-being. We identify major themes, achievements, and challenges and organize the review around the demands-rewards perspective and two theoretical frameworks: the stress process model and life course perspectives. The analysis shows that rising economic insecurities and inequalities and a diffusion of intensive parenting ideology were major social contexts of parenting in the 2010s. Scholarship linking parenting contexts and parental well-being illuminated how stressors related to providing and caring for children could unjustly burden some parents, especially mothers, those with fewer socioeconomic resources, and those with marginalized statuses. In that vein, researchers continued to emphasize how stressors diverged by parents' socioeconomic status, gender, and partnership status, with new attention to strains experienced by racial/ethnic minority, immigrant, and LGBTQ parents. Scholars' comparisons of parents' positions in various countries expanded, enhancing knowledge regarding specific policy supports that allow parents to thrive. Articulating future research within a stress process model framework, we showed vibrant theoretical pathways, including conceptualizing potential parental social supports at multiple levels, attending to the intersection of multiple social locations of parents, and renewing attention to local contextual factors and parenting life stages.

What Should Children Learn? Americans' Changing Socialization Values, 1986-2018.

Assessing changes in socialization values for children provides a unique window into how Americans perceive the landscape of their society. We examine whether, since the mid-1980s, Americans (b) emphasized survival values, like hard work, for children as economic precarity rose, or (a) prioritized self-expression values, like autonomy and compassion, as expected in postindustrial society. Analysis of 1986-2018 General Social Surveys (N = 23,109) supports the precarity thesis: preferences for hard work increased steadily whereas preferences for autonomy, the top-ranked quality throughout the period, declined. There was some indication of enduring self-expression values, as support for compassion increased and its relative importance to hard work stayed stable. Decomposition analyses show valuing hard work would have been even greater without demographic changes like an increase in college graduates. Aligning with earlier research, valuing obedience in children continued to decline. Our results extend theoretical work on complexities of socioeconomic links to parenting values.

Time Deficits with Children: The Link to Parents' Mental and Physical Health.

Time spent with children has become a central concern in North American parenting culture. Using the 2011 Canadian Work, Stress, and Health study (N = 2,007), we examine employed parents' perceptions about having too little time with children and whether these relate to parents' mental and physical health. The "pernicious stressor" hypothesis posits that the demands of paid work combined with intensive mothering or involved fathering create unique time tensions that act as chronic stressors and that these are associated with poorer health and well-being. Alternatively, the "public face" hypothesis suggests that parents often present themselves as good mothers or fathers through an expressed lack of time with children, but statements are superficial and thus are not related to health. We find that about half of employed parents perceive time shortfalls with children; work hours, schedule control, location of work, and family context predict perceived time deficits with children. Supporting the pernicious stressor hypothesis, expressed time deficits are associated with distress, anger, and sleep problems, even when adjusting for work and family factors.

Classroom learning environments and the mental health of first grade children.

Sociological research focuses on how poverty, family, and neighborhood dynamics shape children's problems, but knowledge about how school is related to children's mental health is underdeveloped, despite its central presence in children's lives. Using a social structure and personality-stress contagion perspective, the authors use a nationally representative sample of first graders (N = 10,700) to assess how the classroom learning environment affects children's emotional and behavior problems. Children in more negative environments-such as classrooms with fewer material resources and whose teachers receive less respect from colleagues-have more learning, externalizing, interpersonal, and internalizing problems. Moreover, children in classrooms with low academic standards, excessive administrative paperwork, rowdy behavior, and low skill level of peers have more problems across one or more outcomes. Some school effects vary across race and ethnicity.

The life-course origins of mastery among older people.

In this article, we aim to identify the sources of mastery--the understanding that individuals hold about their ability to control the circumstances of their lives. The sample for our inquiry was drawn from the Medicare beneficiary files of people 65 and older living in Washington, DC, and two adjoining Maryland counties. We find that past circumstances, particularly those reflecting status attainment and early exposure to intractable hardships, converge with stressors experienced in late life to influence elders' level of mastery. The impact of past conditions, however, does not necessarily directly affect the current mastery of older people. Instead, the effect of prior experiences on current mastery is mediated by what we refer to as life-course mastery: one's belief that one has directed and managed the trajectories that connect one's past to the present. Our analyses show that life-course mastery largely serves as the mediating channel through which individuals connect their past to their present.