Time Use and Parenting

MPRC proudly hosts the leading group of researchers in the country who focus on the time allocations of parents and children. Suzanne Bianchi (Sociology) highlighted maternal time expenditures in her 2000 PAA Presidential Address (Demography, 2000) and assessed parental time investments in children in a subsequent article published in the American Journal of Sociology (Sayer et al., 2004).

In August 2006, Bianchi, with MPRC associates John Robinson (Sociology) and Melissa Milkie (Sociology), published Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (Russell Sage), a book-length investigation of changes in parental time allocation since 1965. Changing Rhythms, published as part of the prestigious Rose Series in Sociology, provides compelling evidence that maternal time devoted to childrearing has increased in the U.S.; that fathers are doing more child care than in the past; and that in two-parent families, the total weekly burden of paid plus unpaid work is gender equal. Work loads remain gender specialized with women doing more unpaid family work and fathers doing more market work, but much less gender specialized than in the past.