Mothers' and Fathers' Well‐Being in Parenting Across the Arch of Child Development

• Author: Jocelyn Fischer,Kelly Musick,Ann Meier,Sarah Flood
• Date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12491
• Published date: 01 August 2018

A M University of Minnesota

K M Cornell University∗

J F Cornell University∗∗

S F University of Minnesota∗∗∗

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Well-Being in Parenting

Across the Arch of Child Development

Limited research on parental well-being by

child age suggests that parents are better off

with very young children despite intense time

demands of caring for them. This study uses

the American Time Use Survey Well-Being

Module (N=18,124) to assess how parents

feel in activities with children of different ages.

Results show that parents are worse off with

adolescent children relative to young children.

Parents report the lowest levels of happiness

with adolescents relative to younger children,

and mothers report more stress and less mean-

ing with adolescents. Controlling for contextual

features of parenting including activity type,

solo parenting, and restorative time does not

fully account for the adolescent disadvantage in

Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center,

University of Minnesota, 267 19th Ave.S., Minneapolis,

MN 55455 (meierann@umn.edu).

∗Department of Policy Analysis and Management and

Cornell Population Center, Cornell University,2301 Martha

VanRensselaer Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.

∗∗Department of Policy Analysis and Management,

Department of Sociology, and Cornell Population Center,

Cornell University,2301 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall,

Cornell University,Ithaca, NY 14853.

∗∗∗Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota,

225 19th Ave. S. #50, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

Key Words: child development, parenting, well-being.

fathers’ happiness or mothers’ stress. This study

highlights adolescence as a particularly difcult

stage for parental well-being and shows that

mothers shoulder stress that fathers do not, even

after accounting for differences in the context of

their parenting activities.

The rise in intensive parenting is by now well

documented in both quantitative and qualitative

studies. For example, Sayer,Bianchi, and Robin-

son (2004) showed that parents today spend

more time with children than in the “family ori-

ented” 1960s, and they documented a steady

increase in the proportion of parents’ time spent

in developmental activities compared to the rou-

tine care of children. Lareau’s (2003) ethno-

graphic and interview accounts took us into

the family lives of middle-school aged chil-

dren, providing rich descriptions of upper- and

middle-class parents’ deep investment in cul-

tivating their children’s life skills to prepare

them for successful futures. Research in devel-

opmental psychology has shown variation in

parent–child relationships across the life course,

in part contingent on children’s developmental

needs (e.g., Bornstein, 2002). Consistent with

this, Kalil, Ryan, and Corey (2012) found a

development gradient in how mothers spend

time with children. This stream of research

emphasizes potential gains to children from

992 Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (August 2018): 992–1004

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12491