TY - JOUR
T1 - How Parents Fare
T2 - Mothers’ and Fathers’ Subjective Well-Being in Time with Children
AU - Musick, Kelly
AU - Meier, Ann
AU - Flood, Sarah
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, © American Sociological Association 2016.
PY - 2016/10/1
Y1 - 2016/10/1
N2 - The shift to more time-intensive and child-centered parenting in the United States is widely assumed to be positively linked to healthy child development, but implications for adult well-being are less clear. We assess multiple dimensions of parents’ subjective well-being in activities with children and explore how the gendered nature of time potentially contributes to differences in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting experiences. Relying on nationally representative time diary data linked to respondents’ feelings in activities from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 well-being module of the American Time Use Survey (N = 12,163 persons and 36,036 activities), we find that parents consistently report greater subjective well-being in activities with children than without. Mothers, however, report less happiness, more stress, and greater fatigue in time with children than do fathers. These gaps are relatively small and can be accounted for by differences in the activities that mothers and fathers engage in with children, whether other adults are present, and the quality of their sleep and leisure. We go beyond prior work on parental happiness and life satisfaction to document how contemporary parenting is woven differently into the lives of mothers and fathers.
AB - The shift to more time-intensive and child-centered parenting in the United States is widely assumed to be positively linked to healthy child development, but implications for adult well-being are less clear. We assess multiple dimensions of parents’ subjective well-being in activities with children and explore how the gendered nature of time potentially contributes to differences in mothers’ and fathers’ parenting experiences. Relying on nationally representative time diary data linked to respondents’ feelings in activities from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 well-being module of the American Time Use Survey (N = 12,163 persons and 36,036 activities), we find that parents consistently report greater subjective well-being in activities with children than without. Mothers, however, report less happiness, more stress, and greater fatigue in time with children than do fathers. These gaps are relatively small and can be accounted for by differences in the activities that mothers and fathers engage in with children, whether other adults are present, and the quality of their sleep and leisure. We go beyond prior work on parental happiness and life satisfaction to document how contemporary parenting is woven differently into the lives of mothers and fathers.
KW - gendered family roles
KW - parenting
KW - subjective well-being
KW - time use
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84989221378&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84989221378&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0003122416663917
DO - 10.1177/0003122416663917
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84989221378
SN - 0003-1224
VL - 81
SP - 1069
EP - 1095
JO - American Sociological Review
JF - American Sociological Review
IS - 5
ER -