Children's Experiences of Time When a Parent Travels for Work
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12386 |
| Author | Andrea V. Swenson,Anisa M. Zvonkovic,Zoë Cornwell |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
A M. Z Virginia Tech
A V. S University of Wisconsin–Stout∗
Z C Virginia Tech∗∗
Children’s Experiences of Time When a Parent
Travels for Work
This qualitative study focuses on the different
ways time is experienced by children in fami-
lies who face time challenges because of a family
member’s job that requiredwork travel. Data are
froma family-level study that includes interviews
of all family members older than age 7. Using
grounded theory methodology, this study illus-
trates the ways in which job demands and family
processes interact. The analysis centers on 75
children’s perspectives from 43 families. Hold-
ing together assessments of having enough time
while wanting more time with their parents, chil-
dren expressemotion, generally unrecognized by
parents, around the topic of family time. Chil-
dren’s experience of time with parents is rushed
or calm, depending on the activities done in time
and the gender of the parent with whom they
spend time. Findings are interpreted through a
feminist social constructionist lens.
Everyday lived experience is important for
what it reveals about family life (Daly, 1996,
Department of Human Development, 336 WallaceHall, 295
W. Campus Drive,Blacksburg, VA 24061 (anisaz@vt.edu).
∗Department of Human Development and Family Studies,
141 Heritage Hall, 415 19th Avenue E., Menomonie, WI
54751.
∗∗Department of Human Development, 336 Wallace Hall,
295 W. Campus Drive,Blacksburg, VA 24061.
Key Words: children, families and work, family interaction,
feminism, grounded theory.
2001; Ochs & Kremer-Sedlik, 2013). This study
focuses on how family members experience time
and has, at its nucleus, children’s experiences
of time. Children’s voices provide a refresh-
ing and unique view of family life, especially
when connected with the viewpoints of their
parents (Clark, 2011). There is little qualitative
work on children’s experiences with family
life in general, much less related to parental
work, an important gap to address (Clark,
2011; Gibson, 2012). The bidirectionality of
the parent–child relationship has been widely
accepted in child development and family
studies literature (Harach & Kuczynski, 2005;
Maccoby, 1992), yet little work examines how
children feel about time with parents and family
time beyond parents’ perceptions and worries
(Daly, 2001; Galinsky, 1999). Incorporating
multiple points of view about time from within
the family are challenging but necessary steps
in understanding time in families.
The larger literature on work and family life
documents that North Americans today perceive
a time crunch or speed-up (e.g., Jacobs & Ger-
son, 2004). This project sampled families who
were highly likely to experience time challenges
(Jeong, Zvonkovic, & Acock, 2013), that is, fam-
ilies who had at least one parent who traveled
frequently for work. Although there is literature
on the consequences of high work hours and
high job demands in general (Bakker & Demer-
outi, 2007; Bakker & Geurts, 2004; Hochschild,
1997; Voydanoff, 2005; Wharton & Blair-Loy,
Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (August 2017): 983–1000 983
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12386
984 Journal of Marriage and Family
2006), there have been few studies of work
travel and its impact on individuals and families.
Recent research on workers’ feelings about their
jobs since the recession indicates that workers
perceive that their jobs are unstable and they
therefore are likely to acquiesce to high work
demands, including travel, to present themselves
as dedicated workers (Pugh, 2015; Zvonkovic,
Lee, Brooks-Hurst, & Lee, 2014). This study
adds to the growing need to understand how
work demands impact families by assessing the
experience of time within families with children.
This study explores not only how children expe-
rience time but also how children’s experiences
of time converge or contrast with other family
members by using a grounded theory method-
ology from qualitative interviews with children
and parents, discussing how they make meaning
of their time with each other. Families who
experience work-related travel were chosen for
this study because the intermittent coming and
going from the household has the potential to
evoke nuanced thoughts regarding family time.
T P T’ F
Family members’ backgrounds, expectations,
and experiences get played out in time, inclusive
of both long spans of time as well as daily events.
Mattingly and Sayer (2006) demonstrated how
gender differences in feeling pressed for time
operated for married couples as they articulated
the connection between objective free time
and the perception of time pressure, such that
women’s time pressure increased signicantly
over time, but men’s did not. In addition, more
free time reduced men’s, but not women’s,
perceptions of feeling rushed. One study of how
upper-middle-class children experience time,
from the vantage point of nannies, illuminated
that there can be different views of how much
interaction time with parents occurs and differ-
ent views on the importance of that time with
children (Brown, 2011).
Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006) made
the point that, although parents increasingly feel
the pressure to devote more time resources to
children, parents are in fact directing more time,
resources, and attention toward their children
than 30 years ago. Especially among parents
with higher socioeconomic status, parents have
been found to provide more resources, on aver-
age, to a child during childhood and adolescence
than parents in lower socioeconomic conditions
(Fingerman et al., 2015). When interviewing
middle-class children directly, Galinsky (1999)
reported that they rarely stated that they wanted
more time with their parents. Instead, they
wished for more money and for their parents
to be less stressed. It is possible that the stress
children observed resulted from what leisure
studies scholars Robinson and Godbey (1997,
p. 38) called “time deepening” by parents.
Robinson and Godbey probed the effects of
high work hours on free time among parents
and documented the phenomenon of “time
deepening” (or multitasking) when adults were
at home. Sayer (2007) further examined this
phenomenon and found that dual-earner parents
spend more than 30 hours a week multitask-
ing. In a qualitative study on middle-class and
upper-middle-class parents, Snyder (2007) iden-
tied the most prevalent type of denition of
quality time focused on structured planning for
specic activities, with the next prevalent type
being child centered, focused on the communi-
cation that occurs when parents are accessible
to their children. No matter which type of
construction of quality time parents espoused,
they experienced problems with getting enough
quality time with their children.
Scholars and social critics have called
attention to the high number of activities out-
side of school in which children, especially
middle-class children, are involved (Arendell,
2001; Darrah, Freeman, & English-Lueck,
2007; Lareau, 2003). Not only does children’s
involvement in these activities present a time
demand but it also adds a layer of work for
parents who arrange transportation and manage
the schedule as well as a potential overlay
of stress-related symptoms in children (e.g.,
attention-decit, psychosomatic symptoms,
and others; Arendell, 2001; Garey, 1999;
Hochschild, 1989; Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik,
2013). Mothers, more so than fathers, have
been found to be responsible for organizing and
carrying out such labor (Craig, 2006), which
seems particularly prevalent among the middle
class who appear intent on the concerted cul-
tivation of children to provide them with the
best chance for academic and career success
over time (Hill, Tranby, Kelly, & Moen, 2013;
Lareau, 2003). The term helicopter parenting
refers to parents’ intensive involvement in their
children’s lives, including participation in the
organized and structured activities of children
starting in young childhood and continuing
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