The changing relationship between parents’ education and their time with children

Inequality in American society is under extensive public and academic scrutiny today. This paper utilizes time-use data to explore one facet of that inequality. It examines differences in the time that American parents spend with their children across different levels of parental education. It also examines how these differences have changed between 1985 and 2003. In addition, it explores educational differences in the ratios of mothers’ child time to fathers’ child time. The results indicate that better educated parents used to and continue to spend more time with their children than the less educated. Although parents at all levels of education have increased their time with children over the years, the better educated have made relatively larger gains. Further, while mothers spend more time with children than fathers, the ratio of mothers’ to fathers’ child time was and continues to be lower for the better educated than the less educated. Lastly, the gap in parent-child time between mothers and fathers has narrowed at every education level between 1985 and 2003.