Parents’ Working Hours: Adolescent Children's Views and Experiences

As dual‐earner families have become the norm, the different kinds of ‘time’ children spend with parents has become an important issue. We use the 2000 Time Use Survey to identify adolescent children spending time alone at home, and interviews with 50 children aged 14 and 15 to explore young people's experiences. We investigate their views on their situations, appropriate domestic responsibilities and how they manage their time. We suggest that simple parental presence or absence is not necessarily the main issue for children. However, parental employment may be problematic for some adolescent children.