The Widening Education Gap in Developmental Child Care Activities in the United States, 1965–2013
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12254 |
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Evrim Altintas |
E A Nufeld College, University of Oxford
The Widening Education Gap in Developmental
Child Care Activities in the United States,
1965–2013
Past research shows that time spent in devel-
opmental care activities has been increasing in
the United States over recent decades, yet little
is known about how this increase is distributed
across parents with different levels of educa-
tion. Have children born into differentsocioeco-
nomic groups been receiving increasingly equal
developmental care from their parents, or is the
distribution of parental time investment becom-
ing more unequal? To answer this question, the
author analyzed the American Heritage Time
Use Study (1965–2013) and showed that the gap
between high- and low-educated parents’ time
investment in developmental child careactivities
has widened. An increasing absence of fathers
in households with low-educated mothers has
exacerbated the trend. This study documents
growing inequality in parental time inputs in
developmentally salient child care activities in
the United States.
Time is a strictly limited and valuable resource.
The most productive input for children’s
cognitive skill development is time spent in
educational activities with parents (Fiorini &
Keane, 2014), and early skill development has
Centre for Time Use Research, University of Oxford, 74
Woodstock Rd., Oxford OX26HP, United Kingdom
(evrim.altintas@sociology.ox.ac.uk).
Key Words: child care, inequality,parental investment, time
diary methods, time use.
lifelong consequences (Carneiro & Heckman,
2003; Heckman & Masterov, 2007). Differential
investment in children’s cognitive development
is considered one of the major explanatory
factors behind the increased academic achieve-
ment gap between children born to rich or poor
families (Reardon, 2011; Willingham, 2012).
Within the context of growingincome i nequality
among families with children (Piketty & Saez,
2003; Western, Bloome, & Percheski, 2008)
and a growing gap in nancial investments in
children (Kornrich & Furstenberg, 2013), the
possibility of a parallel rise in inequality in
parental time investment in developmentally
salient care activities would indicate a crucial
dual disadvantage for those born into less afu-
ent households. Children in these households
would be receiving fewer economic resources
as well as less parental time input. In light
of this, some natural questions emerge. First,
has inequality in parental time investments in
children in fact increased over time? Second, do
trends in parents’ nancial and time investments
coincide or have they been diverging?
The last few decades have witnessed an
increase in average child care time among
parents in the United States (Bianchi, Robin-
son, & Milkie, 2006; Gauthier, Smeeding, &
Furstenberg, 2004; Gershuny, 2000; Sayer,
Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004). Other research has
shown differences in parents’ time with children
by education level (see Monna & Gauthier,
2008, for a review). High-educated parents also
modify their parenting activities in accordance
26 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (February 2016): 26–42
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12254
Widening Education Gap in Child Care Activities 27
with the developmental needs of their chil-
dren (Kalil, Ryan, & Corey, 2012). There is,
however, no conclusive evidence on whether
the differences documented in cross-sectional
studies have been decreasing, persisting, or
increasing over time. Previous research on child
care trends has suggested the possibility that
“the average increase might be masking greater
heterogeneity among parents than in the past”
(Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004, p. 32), but
this possibility has not been studied in sufcient
detail. A comprehensive review of the literature
by Monna and Gauthier (2008) highlighted the
absence of research on the issue and called
for more in-depth investigation of “concealed
polarization of families in terms of time spent
with children” (p. 647).
This study lls that gap in the literature by
examining whether inequality between high- and
low-educated parents’ time investments in chil-
dren has grown over time in the United States.
The focus of the article is on the changing
effect of educational attainment because edu-
cation is consistently found to be one of the
most important characteristics for explaining
the amount of time parents allocate to their
children as well as the type of activities they
engage in (Altintas, in press; Craig, Powell, &
Smyth, 2014; Guryan, Hurst, & Kearney, 2008;
Kalil et al., 2012; Monna & Gauthier, 2008;
Sayer, Gauthier, & Furstenberg, 2004; Yeung,
Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001).
This present study advances previous work by
focusing on developmental child care activities
provided for young children by both mothers and
fathers using all the available time use surveys
up until 2013. It shows that high-educated par-
ents shifted their behavioral patterns more than
low-educated parents to provide developmental
child care for their children. The ndings match
the theoretical expectation that high-educated
parents are more likely to focus their time on
activities that improve their children’s social
and cognitive skills. As expected, a signicant
increase in maternal time in developmental care
is observed starting from the 1990s, a period
when the ideals of intensive mothering (Hays,
1996), involved fathering (Coltrane, 1996), and
parenting for cognitive development (Schaub,
2010) spread widely. Although parents of all
social classes spent more time with their chil-
dren in the 2000s compared to earlier peri-
ods, the increase has been more pronounced
for high-educated parents. The education gap in
mothers’ time investment for cognitive develop-
ment reached a peak in the early 2000s, with a
small decline in the last 5 years. Yet the educa-
tion gap in total parental time investment widens
when fathers’ involvement is also taken into
account. Overall, an increase in time investment
in children conceals signicant and increased
polarization by parental education level, con-
tributing to the “diverging destinies” of children
(McLanahan & Jacobsen, 2015).
B
The average time spent in primary child care
activities—that is, the time spent in activities
during which parents are mainly involved in
child care—has increased substantially in the
United States since the 1980s (Bianchi et al.,
2006; Chalasani, 2007; Gauthier et al., 2004;
Gerhsuny, 2000; Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson,
2004; Sullivan, 2010). The main source of this
increase is a change in behavior patterns rather
than a change in the demographic composition
of mothers. In fact, behavioral changes have
compensated for the negative effect of demo-
graphic changes, such as an increase in mar-
ital dissolution and mothers’ participation in
the labor market (Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson,
2004). Why have parents altered their behavior
patterns to increase their time with children?
A commonly accepted explanation refers to
changes in the ideas surrounding “good parent-
ing”, that is, the increased societal emphasis
on parental involvement in children’s social and
cognitive development (Chalasani, 2007; Rear-
don, 2011; Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004;
Schaub, 2010; Waldfogel,2006; Wrigley, 1989).
In her ethnographic study, Hays (1996) argued
that there is a prevalent child-rearing ideology in
the contemporary United States: intensive moth-
ering, which necessitates substantial time and
money investment and requires constant emo-
tional, physical, and mental energy. That has
not always been the case. At the beginning of
the 20th century, typical child-rearing advice
was not as child centered as it is today. In fact,
the “explicit goals of child-rearing were cen-
tred on the good of the family and the nation”
(Hays, 1996, p. 45). The idea that a “good
mother” must devote a substantial amount of
time, money, and energy to foster her children’s
cognitive and social development is therefore a
fairly new phenomenon. Even though its roots
trace back to the 1940s, this paradigm only
To continue reading
Request your trial