Despite 'Mommy Guilt' Time With Kids Increasing

Here is an excellent piece from today's Washington Post that describes the-Time With Children Study-that you can see below in my blog entry dated 3/12/07.

By Donna St. George Washington Post Staff Writer March 20, 2007

Cynthie Bush pulled on her coat and started to say goodbye. She and a friend were taking a night out -- three hours in all, for a quick dinner and a PTA event. It was not the kind of thing she did often, with two small children and a full-time job.

But before she could leave her Herndon home, her 4-year-old daughter began to cry for her. For a moment, Bush recalled, she wondered if she should cancel. Her days were already so full. She needed more hours with her children, not fewer. That whisper of worry and regret is familiar to a generation of mothers who juggle homework and housework, sports practice and dance lessons, in days that often include paid jobs and traffic-snarled commutes.

But for all the rush of modern life, recent research suggests that mothers are actually doing a better job than they may think, at least by historical standards. According to a University of Maryland study, today's mothers spend more hours focused on their children than their own mothers did 40 years ago, often imagined as the golden era of June Cleaver, television's ever-cheerful, cookie-baking mom.

In 1965, mothers spent 10.2 hours a week tending primarily to their children -- feeding them, reading with them or playing games, for example -- according to the study's analysis of detailed time diaries kept by thousands of Americans. That number dipped in the 1970s and 1980s, rose in the 1990s and now is higher than ever, at nearly 14.1 hours a week.

This is especially striking because it is at odds with how today's mothers view their own lives: Roughly half of those interviewed said they did not have enough time with their children.
"It's almost like it doesn't matter how much they do, they feel they do not do enough," said sociologist Suzanne M. Bianchi, the study's lead author.

"This is part of the burden of this generation of parents: enormously high expectations for how children develop, how they feel about themselves, how they achieve and how successful they are in the world," said William Doherty, a family studies professor at the University of Minnesota.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Parents Find Time to Spend with Kids Despite Work Pressures by Dr. Alan Singer

Reading a daily newspaper can be so depressing, don't you agree? Everything is bad for you. You can't even enjoy a guilt-free cup of coffee. But some recent research, on how parents manage to spend as much time with their children as 40 years ago, is very encouraging. So why don't we read more about it in the media? This essay was published in the Home News Tribune on 02/16/07.

New research gets copious media attention as trends come and go. Remember way back in the '80s when parents used to put their infants to sleep on their stomachs? Now in 2007, don't you dare! How about a decade ago, when large amounts of beta carotene could prevent cancer? Now in 2007, that's beta what? When a major myth is busted, why don't we hear about it at a level that matches the original media blitz?

The myth I want to focus on posits: If mothers work outside the home, children suffer because of less parent-child contact hours. To the contrary, researchers Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie found: "Parents are spending as much and perhaps more time interacting with their children today than parents in 1965, the heyday of the stay-at-home mother." The authors of this research have written a book titled "Changing Rhythms of American Family Life" and came to their myth-busting conclusion by analyzing four decades of time-diary surveys, where parents chronicle all of their daily activities.

"For married mothers," states Robert Pear (The New York Times, Oct. 17, 2006), "the time spent on child-care activities increased to an average of 12.9 hours a week in 2000, from 10.6 hours in 1965. For married fathers, the time spent on child care more than doubled, to 6.5 hours a week from 2.6 hours." How could their findings be correct? How can mothers who work more hours than ever before continue to spend as much time with their children as they did 40 years ago?

The authors explain, "By increasingly engaging in multitasking and incorporating their children in their own leisure activities, parents have deepened their time to circumvent the simple zero-sum trade-off between work and the other areas of their lives." Isn't it also counterintuitive to discover that mothers these days are getting as much sleep and leisure time as in earlier decades? One key factor that explains this paradox is that mothers are spending less time than their own mothers doing housework. Fathers have increased the time they spend on both domestic chores and fathering.

Referring to this research, Robert Pear continues, "Fathers have picked up some of the slack. Married fathers are spending more time on housework: an average of 9.7 hours a week in 2000, up from 4.4 hours in 1965." Lest I give you the impression that life is wonderful these days, there is clearly a downside to this good news. "Today's mothers feel more rushed," stress the authors, "as if they are doing everything at once, than their mothers did. This is common across all mothers, though more intense for those who are employed — especially when compared with fathers."

Nevertheless, why do I wish we would hear more media hoopla about this research study? Three reasons: First, this is a win-win situation for children. Parent-child contact hours are critical in child development. If these precious hours that parents and children spend together are stable and not declining, that is terrific. Second, it indicates that parents really care and are exerting themselves.

That brings me to my final point — resilience. Parents have been handed difficult circumstances (here we focused mainly on employment) and have landed on their feet. They have kept their eyes on the goal of secure and supportive family life and will not be deterred. That is a great accomplishment for parents of this generation, and it is also a great thing for their children to observe and internalize. It's good to know, that even though times have changed, the commitment of parents to their children has not.

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a Marriage Therapist in Highland Park and can be reached at DrAlanSinger@aol.com He blogs at www.familythinking.com