Towards intensive parenting? <scp>C</scp>hanges in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992–2006
2014/03/17 by Lyn Craig, Abigail Powell, Ciara Smyth · 34 citations
Social Sciences · #Work-Family Balance Challenges #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Family Dynamics and Relationships
paper · doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12035
Abstract
Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non-work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent-child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk-based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child-centred parenting. Fathers' parent-child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time.
Cited by
- Social class, intensive parenting norms and parental values for children
- Neoliberalising Education: New Geographies of Private Tuition, Class Privilege, and Minority Ethnic Advancement
- Parental Marital Quality and Children’s Depression in China: The Different Mediating Roles of Parental Psychological Aggression and Corporal Punishment
- Nurturing across generations: Unveiling the dynamics and heterogeneity in grandparental care involvement
- Hegemonic femininity, motherhood, and alcohol in Australia
- Concerted cultivation in early childhood and social inequalities in cognitive skills: Evidence from a German panel study
- Research note: Gender and educational differences in childcare time: Evidence from the Czech Republic
- “Unless I could be like the typical dad”: Exploring parenthood through the perspective of the voluntarily childfree
- Navigating “proper food” and “good mothering” on social media
- Stimulation beliefs, parental reading involvement, and social inequalities in children's language development
- Geographies of supplementary education: Private tuition, classed and racialised parenting cultures, and the neoliberal educational playing field
- Playing the public realm: children’s lived experiences of a neighbourhood play network in a high-density urban community
- The Longitudinal Association Between Early Childhood Obesity and Fathers' Involvement in Caregiving and Decision-Making. [europepmc]
- Moderation of associations between maternal parenting styles and Australian pre-school children's dietary intake by family structure and mother's employment status. [europepmc]
- Parents' Work Schedules and Time Spent with Children. [europepmc]
- A Quantitative Assessment of the Rush Hour of Life in Austria, Italy and Slovenia. [europepmc]
- Are Children a Joy or a Burden? Individual- and Macro-level Characteristics and the Perception of Children. [europepmc]
- Fathers' Involvement with Their Children Before and After Separation. [europepmc]
- Parental Burnout Around the Globe: a 42-Country Study. [europepmc]
- Physical Activity, Fitness, and Cognitive Performance of Estonian First-Grade Schoolchildren According Their MVPA Level in Kindergarten: A Longitudinal Study. [europepmc]
- Educational and Type of Day Differences in Mothers' Time Availability for Child Care and Housework. [europepmc]
- Class Inequality in Parental Childcare Time: Evidence from Synthetic Couples in the ATUS. [europepmc]
- The Impact of Formal School Entry on Children's Social Relationships with Parents, Siblings, and Friends. [europepmc]
- Culture and Social Change in Mothers' and Fathers' Individualism, Collectivism and Parenting Attitudes. [europepmc]
- Cultural values, parenting and child adjustment: Introduction to the special issue. [europepmc]
- Impact of "intensive parenting attitude" on children's social competence via maternal parenting behavior. [europepmc]
- Mixed progress in adolescent health and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand 2001-2019: a population overview from the Youth2000 survey series. [europepmc]
- The 2021 Baby Boom in Iceland: Exploring the Role of a Parental Leave Reform and the COVID-19 Pandemic. [europepmc]
- The Indirect Effects of Fathers' Parenting Style and Parent Emotion Regulation on the Relationship Between Father Self-Efficacy and Children's Mental Health Difficulties. [europepmc]
- Emotional Reflexivity and Lifelong Leisure Time Physical Activity: Managing 'Successful Womanhood' for Busy Middle-Class Women. [europepmc]
- When parental care hurts: extended parental care and the evolution of overparenting. [europepmc]
- Intergenerational stability in parenting across two generations: A multilevel meta-analytic review. [europepmc]
- Perspectives on the future: Combining work and family care in 2040. [europepmc]
- Delineating specificity in parental responses to children's distress: Associations with neighborhood risk and children's socioemotional outcomes. [europepmc]
Related