Children’s Time Use: Labor Divisions and Schooling in Indonesia

Data from the Worker and Iron Status Evaluation are used to examine gendered patterns in children’s time in market and nonmarket work, schooling, and leisure in Indonesia (N= 2,929). Boys spend more time in market work; girls spend more time in nonmarket work. Work responsibilities increase with age as well as gender differentials in children’s time use. By age 18, girls spend nearly 1 more hour per day working and enjoy significantly less leisure time, but the gender gap in schooling is not significant, suggesting that parents and children are committed to both work and schooling. Additionally, Tobit regression results suggest that parents’ education, household income, and rural residency are important predictors of children’s labor and schooling time.     

FAMILIES’ CARE OF THEIR CHILDREN WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES IN AUSTRALIA

In Australia, from the 1980s, the processes of de-institutionalization and non-institutionalization have resulted in most children with severe disabilities being cared for at home. Current Australian government policy suggests that care increasingly will be undertaken in the home. The needs of families, then, is an area that requires attention. The findings in this paper are drawn from a series of qualitative in-depth interviews with parents of children with severe disabilities and, in particular, I highlight issues raised in relation to income, work, leisure and social relationships. Typically, despite the provision of formal (and informal) support services, participation in the wider community is limited. I argue that the provision of support services has been inadequate to enable engagement in activities that other families take for granted and that greater social policy attention is warranted.     

A child's day: trends in time use in the UK from 1975 to 2015

This paper examines change in school‐age children’s (8–16 years) time use in the United Kingdom between 1975 and 2015. Over this period, concerns for children’s safety, technological change, and increased emphasis on success in school are widely argued to have altered children’s daily lives, leading for example to less time outdoors, more time in screen‐based activities, and more time focused on education. Using data from three national time use surveys collected in 1974–5, 2000–01 and 2014–15, this paper explores the extent to which these arguments reflect actual change in how children spend their time throughout the day. The results show that between 1975 and 2015 children increased their time at home, and spent more time in screen‐based activities and doing homework. Decreases in time in out‐of‐home activities were concentrated in time in unstructured play, partially offset by increased time in sport. A decomposition of trends revealed that, despite a narrowing of the gender gap in time in housework, gender remains a significant factor determining many aspects of children’s time use. In contrast, the significance of age declined in most leisure activities, with the exception of screen‐based activities where significant age differences emerged in 2000 and widened further in 2015.     

Divers' Accounts of Normal Risk

This research examines how deep sea divers learn to expand notions of risk to include practices that violate formal training and may increase vulnerability to injury. Cultural constructions of “normal” or acceptable risk are learned in interaction with experienced divers who define the rules of membership and provide accounts that excuse or justify participation in high risk activities. The research explores how novice divers learn to distinguish categories of formal, normal, and excessive risk as they expand their risk involvement and attempt to achieve membership in the deep diving subculture. The study concludes with a discussion of risk normalization in everyday life and other leisure and occupational subcultures.     

Spousal influences on parents’ non-market time choices

This paper considers the effect of spouse’s characteristics on time devoted to leisure, child caregiving, and home production of married mothers and fathers using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Five spousal variables are considered: the relative wage of the wife compared to her husband, spouse’s weekly hours of employment, and the spouse’s time in three unpaid activities. Each requires instrumentation in order to address issues of endogeneity and possible selection bias. In addition, in order to handle the problem that there is only a single time diary per household, two alternative strategies are explored: out-of-sample prediction and propensity matching. Using either method, the results show little effect of one spouse on the unpaid time use of parents. Most importantly, relative wage does not appear to affect time use choices of parents. There does appear to be a small consistent effect of one’s spouse’s leisure time on own leisure time; husband’s and wife’s leisure time appears to be complementary.     

PROFILING THE DRUGGIE LIFESTYLE: CHARACTERISTICS RELATED TO SOUTHERN COLLEGE STUDENTS' USE OF ILLICIT DRUGS

Drawing on self-report survey data from a sample of 1,218 Southern college/university students collected in 1998, this study examines the relationship of demographics, family and background statuses, peer influences, experiences of alcohol and tobacco use, and academic activities as they influence the use of illicit drugs. Separate examinations are conducted to construct the profile of individuals who use marijuana only and those who use harder (i.e., cocaine, stimulants, LSD, opiates, ecstasy) drugs. Results reveal that marijuana-only users received little/inconsistent supervision as children, are members of fewer social clubs/organizations, are more likely to skip class, smoke, party with friends, get drunk often, and get drunk in public. Harder drug users report little/inconsistent supervision as children, getting drunk frequently and in public, are less far along in their schooling, spend their leisure time partying at friends’ homes or bars where they are regulars, and/or going to concerts, and/or attending club functions, and are tobacco smokers.     

Marriage: for love,for money…and for time?

Married couples enjoy meaningful economies in time, often choosing to specialize where one spouse focuses on market work and the other on household production and childcare. Using data from the American Time Use Survey 2003–2008, I estimate significant marriage effects upon time use. Most married women gain 33–34 min of leisure each weekday when compared to single women. While marriage does not lead to more leisure for husbands, it allows them to allocate time away from home and towards market work. Lower-income couples work more at home and for pay, and spend less time in leisure than their single counterparts. The temporal and financial gains from marriage for most people are inconsistent with its declining prevalence.     

THE DEMAND FOR EDUCATION FOR HOME PRODUCTION

This paper analyzes a type of education thus far ignored in the literature—non-credit adult education to enhance home production skills. In the analysis, we test whether such education behaves as an investment in home productivity and also compare the differences between demands for home productivity enhancing education and labor market enhancing education. Results on four adult cohorts indicate that both types of schooling have investment components, although there are also significant differences in the two demand functions. Results also indicate that the two types of education are complementary rather than substitute activities.     

Schooling youth (sub)cultures in East Asian education: the case of high school rock in Taiwan

Over the past few years, some articles in this journal began to propose avenues of inquiry that would go beyond the long lasting subculture/post-subculture debate. This article aims to contribute to this emerging literature through examining the semi-independent role of ‘schooling’ in shaping specific patterns of youth (sub)cultural participation with specific reference to the role of high school rock music in Taiwan. I analyse how certain schooling structures and institutions – such as academic ranking and exams – frame the way students engage in their rock activities, and how this facilitates the popularity of heavy metal rock and the replication of exam culture in students’ rock subculture. Extending Shildrick and Macdonald’s use of the term ‘leisure career’, I suggest that an in-depth analysis of the interplay between young people’s ‘educational career’ and their focused leisure activities can be useful in understanding how specific patterns of decision making shape young students’ everyday culture and contribute to the distinctiveness of their subcultural participation.     

Is volunteer labor part of household production? Evidence from married couples

Volunteer labor is generally modeled as an individualistic pursuit, akin to leisure or to human capital accumulation. Some activities labeled as volunteering, however, may be more usefully thought of as quid pro quo time commitments that are part of securing services for family members. Parents are frequently expected to volunteer, for example, when their children participate in youth sports leagues or school marching bands. In such cases, volunteering is essentially an instance of household production undertaken outside the home. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we divide volunteering into three categories—youth-related, religious, and non-youth-related secular—according to the likelihood that an instance of volunteering in the category represents household production. We find evidence that husbands and wives respond to one another’s time pressures such that youth-related volunteering looks like a task for which husbands’ and wives’ time inputs substitute for one another. Further, we find this pattern for housework, and not for other forms of volunteering. An increase in either spouse’s hours of market work will significantly reduce that spouse’s likelihood of volunteering for youth-related activities while raising the partner’s likelihood of volunteering. A similar pattern holds for hours volunteered to youth-related activities, with the wife’s responses achieving statistical significance.     

Education for women's empowerment or schooling for women's subordination?

This article distinguishes between "schooling for subordination," the notion that promotes conventional schooling for women within existing school systems as a possible basis for them to improve their position in society and "education for empowerment," a more radical perspective that links women's advancement with the transformation of the patriarchal social order. The article opens by defining gender training as provision of skills and methods for improved gender-orientation of development programs. The conservative interpretation of gender training holds that it seeks to increase women's access to resources. The radical definition holds that inequality in access to resources is a mere symptom of a deeper problem caused by structural gender inequality and calls for conscientization of this problem. The two definitions of women's empowerment that follow this distinction are 1) a watered-down view of empowerment as self-reliance reflecting the conservative definition and 2) a more robust and pure view of empowerment as enabling women to identify and end the discriminatory practices that block their access to resources. It follows that education may be mere schooling for subordination in systems where patriarchal gatekeepers limit chances for women and where women who do succeed become "honorary males" and "queen bees" intent on repelling the advancement of other women. Education for empowerment can be found in gender training, which holds objectives that are opposite to those found in formal schooling and may be more readily adopted by women with less exposure to formal, patriarchal schools.     

Parent adoption and implementation of obesity prevention practices through building children's asking skills at family child care homes

BackgroundEarly childhood education programs provide a setting to reach children and parents to modify home environments to prevent obesity. The Healthy Opportunities for Physical Activity and Nutrition Home (HOP’N) Home project was a novel approach that linked Family Child Care Homes (FCCH) to home environments by developing children’s asking skills for healthful home environmental change through curricular activities.ObjectiveTo evaluate the feasibility of engaging parents in obesity prevention practices through building children's asking skills at FCCH.MethodsFCCHs (n = 5 settings) and children (n = 25; aged 3−5 years; female = 36 %; non-Hispanic white = 91 %; low socioeconomic status = 28 %; overweight/obese = 52 %) and parents (n = 25) participated in a pre-post cohort design. We assessed children's body mass index and self-report variables at three time points. HOP'N Home included continuous staff training, group time, dramatic play, meal prompts, songs, and home activities.ResultsFCCH providers implemented 83%–100% of intervention activities. All parents (100 %) adopted the program, most (87 %) returned completed homework activities to FCCHs, and over 90 % implemented changes in the home. Percent of overweight/obese children decreased from pre-intervention (50 %) to post-intervention (29 %,p = 0.06) and follow-up (38 %,p = 0.06).ConclusionsIt is feasible to build children's asking skills and pair this strategy with home activities to engage parents to prevent obesity.     

Household Production and Health

This paper highlights the influence of the new home economics in general and Jacob Mincer's work in particular on the field of health economics. I begin by considering the value of time as a determinant of adult health and medical care utilization. I then turn to a similar treatment in the case of children's health and medical care utilization. I conclude with alternative explanations of the positive relationship between years of formal schooling completed and health, a topic that deals with complementary relationships between the two most important components of the stock of human capital.     

Time,Work, and Family Life: Reconceptualizing Gendered Time Patterns Through the Case of Children’s Organized Activities1

This article considers the understudied phenomenon of children’s organized leisure as it relates to the division of labor in the family. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we first ask whether the labor entailed by children’s organized leisure is divided evenly between mothers and fathers. Both data sets indicate that this is not the case, with the majority of the work falling to mothers; they also indicate that at least some employed mothers face a tradeoff between time devoted to paid work and time devoted to facilitating their children’s leisure. Subsequently, we consider key qualitative aspects of these leisure activities, including deadline sensitivity, authority over scheduling, and degree of predictability. These factors, we find, serve to exacerbate the inequity of the allocation of responsibility between mothers and fathers. We conclude by suggesting that organized leisure has become an important part of the familial landscape and thus warrants further attention. We also suggest that research on the gender division of labor would be enhanced in important ways by greater attention to qualitative dimensions of time use. Researchers should not simply assume that “an hour is an hour.”     

Home Production,House Values,and the Great Recession

Traditional labor supply models grounded in the trade-off between labor and leisure are incomplete to the extent that they neglect time spent in home production: productive labor that is not exchanged in a market setting. Models that do incorporate home production typically predict a negative relationship with the wage rate, a relationship emphasized by most analyses of time devoted to home production during recessions. However, empirical studies of the behavior of home production over the business cycle find that home production is relatively acyclical. The prominence of the fall in house values during the Great Recession suggests an alternative driver of hours dedicated to home production: non-labor endowments and assets, specifically housing equity. This paper explores the role that changing house values play in determining time dedicated to home production using the American Time Use Survey. It concludes that on the margin, time allocation responds to changes in house values in the anticipated way only under certain conditions. Specifically, when non-owners are excluded from the analysis the anticipated results do not hold. Some suggestions to explain this result are provided, as well as a discussion of future clarifying research.     

‘I'm Home for the Kids’: Contradictory Implications for Work–Life Balance of Teleworking Mothers

This study explores the experience of time flexibility and its relationship to work–life balance among married female teleworkers with school‐aged children. Drawing from a larger study of teleworkers from a Canadian financial corporation, 18 mothers employed in professional positions discussed work, leisure and their perceptions of work–life balance in in‐depth interviews. Telework was viewed positively because flexible scheduling facilitated optimal time management. A key factor was the pervasiveness of caregiving, which could result in ongoing tensions and contradictions between the ethic of care and their employment responsibilities. The ideology of ‘intensive mothering’ meant that work schedules were closely tied to the rhythms of children's school and leisure activities. The different temporal demands of motherhood and employment resulted in little opportunity for personal leisure. Time ‘saved’ from not having to commute to an office was reallocated to caregiving, housework or paid employment rather than to time for their self. The women also experienced a traditional gendered division of household labour and viewed telework as a helpful tool for combining their dual roles. Time flexibility enhanced their sense of balancing work and life and their perceived quality of life. At the same time, they did not question whether having the primary responsibility for caregiving while engaged in paid employment at home was fair or whether it was a form of exploitation.     

Family Leisure and Changing Ideologies of Parenthood

This paper examines the significant role that family leisure plays in family life, and the ways in which family time, family activities, and family vacations reflect and contribute to changing ideologies of parenthood (including ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood). Research on this topic has shown family leisure to be a parental commitment, organized and constructed for the benefit of children and for the family as a whole. At the same time, family leisure has contradictory meanings and outcomes, because of the work involved and the difficulties associated with organizing and facilitating positive family experiences. Moreover, the work of family leisure falls disproportionately to mothers, reducing their personal time and personal leisure. It is argued that family leisure is a new obligation of parenthood, and one that has important implications for understanding ideas, beliefs and practices associated with intensive motherhood and involved fatherhood.     

CALIBRATING MEASURES OF FAMILY ACTIVITIES BETWEEN LARGE- AND SMALL-SCALE DATA SETS

Two studies of working families are combined to demonstrate a strategy for producing reliable estimates from the combination of self-reported (large N) and observational (small N) data. Both studies examine where and how dual-career families spend time at home. The 500 Family Study is sociological and uses self-reported time diary data from a national sample; the CELF study is anthropological and uses observational scan sampling data from a regional sample of 32 families. The data are combined as if they constitute one sample, and an analytic solution for establishing the reliability of the resulting composite estimates of time use is provided. Merging the data sets provides validation for each study, neither of which is without potential methodological weaknesses. The advantages of combining data from the independent data collection methods are discussed, and selected substantive findings on families' activities are highlighted, illustrating similarities and differences between findings in the independent and combined data sets. Results show that working families spend significant time in a small spectrum of home spaces, particularly kitchens and living rooms, with leisure activities prevailing, but mothers, fathers, and children differ in where and how they spend their time. Overall, a template for merging data from different disciplines and methods is provided.     

Children's time in structured and unstructured leisure activities

Using the 1981 Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study data, this study examines factors which influence children's time use in leisure activities. More time is spent in unstructured than structured leisure activities. Analysis of variance is performed on 32 categories of leisure time, including total leisure, to determine the influence of characteristics of the child and the mother and other socioeconomic characteristics. Males spend significantly more time than females in active sports, playing games, and passive leisure especially watching television on weekends. Females spend significantly more time than males socializing on weekends. The amount of time spent socializing increases with age but decreases with employment. Time spent playing games decreases with age, increases with number of children, and decreases as family income increases. Given the large number of children who do not participate in a given set of leisure activities, future research should examine the probability of participation.The data used in this article were made available by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study, 1975–1981 were originally collected by F. Thomas Juster, Martha S. Hill, Frank P. Stafford, and Jacquelynne Eccles Parsons of the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan. Neither the collector of the original data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analysis or interpretation presented here.Carol B. Meeks is a Professor and Teresa Mauldin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Housing and Consumer Economics, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Dr. Meeks' research interests include time use, family structure, and economic aspects of housing. She received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Dr. Mauldin, who also received her Ph.D. from Ohio State University, is interested in time use, economic well being of individuals and families, and family structure.     

Sibling Additions,Resource Dilution,and Cognitive Development During Early Childhood

A sizable literature found an inverse association between number of siblings and developmental outcomes. Little is known about this relationship during the earliest years of children's lives, a period when parental attention and resources matter greatly for cognitive development. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort, a nationally representative sample of American children born in 2001, this study investigates the inter‐relationships between siblings, home resources, and cognitive development during the years before formal schooling. To address unobserved differences between families, child fixed effects models were used to assess children's experiences before and after the birth of a sibling. The birth of a sibling was not significantly associated with lower cognitive development, even when the age spacing between the siblings was small. Concerning home resources, interpersonal resources mattered a great deal for young children's cognitive development, but interpersonal resources were not shaped by the presence of siblings.