Do employed mothers today spend as much time with their children as stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s?
No, because there are only 24 hours in a day and sleep is a necessity
Earlier this year, I clicked on a Vox article that claimed “working moms1 in the 2010s spent as much time with their kids as stay-at-home moms in the 1970s.” As a bit of a backstory, I took up learning R in the past year or so as a hobby and have made copious use of the wonderful IPUMS databases provided by the University of Minnesota, and while I hadn’t worked with the time use datasets yet, I was familiar with them.
I am also, as the part-time employed and primary caregiving mother to three young children, very familiar with how many hours there are in a day. While expecting my oldest, I worked full time as an administrative assistant, so I know how long I was out of the house in those days, despite my unusually short commute for the DC area (it was about 15 minutes door to door during rush hour, including dropping my husband off at the metro station). In short, the article’s assertion struck me as improbable.
So, I started clicking. The 2023 article linked to a 2021 Vox article titled “The Real Reason American Parents Hate Each Other” (I don’t think they do, but I realize headline writers have to make a living). That article repeated the claim — “By the 2010s, working moms were spending as much time with their children as stay-at-home moms had in the 1970s” — and linked to a 2015 piece in the Washington Post. This article said, "In fact, working mothers today, an earlier groundbreaking study of Milkie’s found, are spending as much time with their children as at-home mothers did in the early 1970s,” and while it did not give the title of this earlier study, I was able to trace it back to Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, published in 2006 by Suzanne Bianche, John Robinson, and Melissa Milkie, and procure a used copy for $7.
The book says no such thing. In chapter 4, the authors look at three time use studies: the 1975-1976 Time Use in Economic and Social Accounts, the 1998-1999 Family Interaction, Social Capital, and Trends in Time Use Study, and the 2000 National Survey of Parents.2 They look at three different types of time: primary child care, secondary child care and “all time with children.”
Primary child care is when respondents gave a childcare activity in response to the question “what were you doing?” In this chapter’s analysis, it includes both routine caregiving activities and “enriching” or “interactive” activities. Secondary child care is described as “additional time in child care that parents report while involved in primary activities that are not described as child care.”3 I’m engaged in secondary child care right now — I’m writing, but I’m also supervising my two oldest as they play in the backyard. Finally, time with children is the most expansive category, capturing any time parents spent in the presence of their children.
Returning to the three quotes, each refers to time with children. But Bianchi et. al.’s analysis clearly states that within the category of “all time with children,” employed mothers in 2000 spent 42.3 hours with their children per week while “non-employed” mothers in 1975 spent 56 hours — or 32% more than employed mothers in 2000.4 Employed mothers in 1975 spent 38 hours with their children, while non-employed mothers in 2000 spent 64.7. The three quotes are quite clearly false.
But perhaps when the quotes said “time with children,” they were referring to the combination of primary and secondary child care? Even there however, 1975 stay-at-home moms (SAHMs) are engaged in more child care than 2000 working mothers.5 For primary + secondary, employed mothers in 2000 spent 14.5 hours in combined primary and secondary childcare to 17.6 hours for 1975 SAHMs.
So what does the book say? “Employed mothers in 2000 averaged 11 hours per week in primary child care, virtually the same that non-employed mothers reported in their diaries in 1975.”6 Therein lies the confusion — primary child care, not “time with children.”
That SAHMs in the 1975s would spend more time with their children than employed mothers in 1998-2000 is not particularly surprising. A quick glance at the three datasets shows that employed mother respondents averaged 34 hours of paid work per week in 1975 and 38 in 2000.7 There are only 24 hours in a day and everyone needs to sleep.
Two morals: first, stop and think about incredible claims; second, check primary sources. Relatedly, here’s a Vox article I enjoyed that does exactly that.
“Working moms” usually denotes mothers employed for pay, though mothers who are not in the labor force but engaged in caregiving or housework are, of course, also working.
The latter two surveys are combined for the 2000 data column
Suzanne M. Bianchi, Melissa A. Milkie, and John P. Robinson, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), 68.
Bianchi et. al., 76
My guess is that the 2010s vs. 2000 confusion comes from the Washington Post article, which uses the word “today,” while the book is specific in looking at 2000 data.
Bianchi et. al., 77
Kimberly Fisher, Jonathan Gershuny, Sarah M. Flood, Joan Garcia Roman and Sandra L. Hofferth. American Heritage Time Use Study Extract Builder: Version 1.2 1975 and 1998 samples. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2018. https://doi.org/10.18128/D061.V1.2