Time for Each Other: Work and Family Constraints Among Couples

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12255
• Author: Katie R. Genadek,Sarah M. Flood
• Published date: 01 February 2016
• Date: 01 February 2016

S M. F  K R. G University of Minnesota

Time for Each Other: Work and Family Constraints

Among Couples

Little is known about couples’ shared time

and how actual time spent together is associ-

ated with well-being. In this study, the authors

investigated how work and family demands

are related to couples’ shared time (total and

exclusive) and individual well-being (happiness,

meaningfulness, and stress) when with one’s

spouse. They used individual-level data from

the 2003–2010 American Time Use Survey

(N=46,883), including the 2010 Well-Being

Module. The results indicated that individuals

in full-time working dual-earner couples spend

similar amounts of time together as individ-

uals in traditional breadwinner–homemaker

arrangements on weekdays after accounting for

daily work demands. The ndings also show

that parents share signicantly less total and

exclusive spousal time together than nonpar-

ents, though there is considerable variation

among parents by age of the youngest child.

Of signicance is that individuals experience

greater happiness and meaning and less stress

during time spent with a spouse opposed to time

spent apart.

There is evidence that couples try to coordinate

their schedules (e.g., Hamermesh, 2002; Sulli-

van, 1996), that shared time is important for

marital well-being (e.g., Daly, 2001; Gager &

Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 50

Willey Hall, 225 19th Ave.S., Minneapolis, MN 55455

(oo0017@umn.edu).

Key Words: interaction, paid work, parenthood, time use,

well-being.

Sanchez, 2003; Milkie & Peltola, 1999), and

that the quality of marital relationships is asso-

ciated with the quality of parent–child relation-

ships (e.g., Jekielek, 1998; Malinen et al., 2010).

Yet the focus of most research on time spent

with others has focused on parent–child time

(e.g., Bianchi, 2000; Sayer, Bianchi, & Robin-

son, 2004); the examination of the time spouses

spend together has been scarce. In this study, we

addressed two specic questions: (a) How are

the competing demands of work and family asso-

ciated with couples’ shared time and (b) how is

couples’ shared time tied to well-being—that is,

happiness, meaning, and stress?

Although couples’ joint engagement in

daily activities is positively associated with

marital well-being (Amato, Booth, Johnson,

& Rogers, 2007; Booth, Johnson, White, &

Edwards, 1985, 1986; Crawford, Houts, Huston,

& George, 2002; Gager & Sanchez, 2003; Hill,

1988; White, 1983; Zuo, 1992), work and family

demands, as well as the competing devotions

they require (Blair-Loy, 2003), constrain the

time couples can spend together. Indeed, studies

suggest that time with a spouse may be sacri-

ced to manage work and parenting demands

(Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Claxton &

Perry-Jenkins, 2008; White 1983; Wight, Raley,

& Bianchi, 2008). Paid workers have reported

that time with a spouse is limited, which affects

their marital relationships (Bianchi et al., 2006;

Nomaguchi, Milkie, & Bianchi, 2005; Rox-

burgh, 2006). Women’s time with children, on

the other hand, has remained stable over the past

50 years despite women’s greater participation

and hours spent in the labor market (Bianchi,

142 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (February 2016): 142–164

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12255

Time for Each Other 143

2000; Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; Sayer et al.,

2004), yet parents’ marital satisfaction is lower

than that of nonparents (e.g., Dew & Wilcox,

2011; Twenge et al., 2003). Therefore, a better

understanding of couples’ shared time and how

they feel about it is of great importance for the

well-being of many Americans.

Despite the challenges contemporary couples

face in nding time for one another, schol-

ars have devoted only limited attention to the

systematic analysis of couples’ shared time.

The majority of the research on marital inter-

action is based on responses to stylized ques-

tions in which an individual reports how often

or how long he or she did something with a

spouse during a given reference period, typi-

cally a week, month, or year. Evidence sug-

gests that time diary data are a better mecha-

nism for capturing information on time spent

with a spouse (Hamermesh, 2002, 2005), yet

only a limited body of research has used this

type of data to examine marital interaction. Pre-

vious research on couples’ shared time using

time diary data has investigated leisure activi-

ties (Barnet-Verzat,Pailhé, & Solaz, 2010; Voor-

postel, van der Lippe, & Gershuny, 2009), time

spent alone with a spouse in any kind of activ-

ity (Dew, 2009), and total shared time as well

as shared time in different types of activities

(Kingston & Nock, 1987; Mansour & McKin-

nish, 2014). On the basis of our review of

the literature, only two studies—Wight et al.

(2008) and Bianchi et al. (2006)—have inves-

tigated both total time spent with a spouse

and time alone with a spouse. Wight and col-

leagues did so in the context of nonstandard

work arrangements, and Bianchi and colleagues

conducted bivariate analyses of differences in

shared time among working parents between

1975 and 2000.

In this study, we investigated the time cou-

ples spend together and associations with work

and family demands, thereby contributing a

thorough investigation to a sparse literature on

an important topic. We build on a somewhat

dated (Kingston & Nock, 1987) and limited

set of knowledge about couples’ shared time

(Barnet-Verzat et al., 2010; Bianchi et al., 2006;

Dew, 2009; Mansour & McKinnish, 2014;

Voorpostel et al., 2009; Wight et al., 2008) by

bringing recent evidence from a large, nation-

ally representative data set and by examining

couples’ time spent alone together and their

time spent together overall. Given the relevance

of both work and family constraints in shaping

time pressures and the competition between

work and family in individuals’ daily lives, we

investigated variation in couples’ shared time

by work and life stage. We also examined how

the actual experience of shared time is related

to emotional well-being, using data from a

2010 module of the American Time Use Survey

(ATUS; Hofferth, Flood, & Sobek, 2013), in

which respondents provided momentary assess-

ments of well-being during three randomly

selected activities throughout the day. This

research contributes to a rich literature that con-

siders the relationship between global measures

of marital interaction and marital well-being,

in which well-being is typically divorced from

specic time spent with a spouse.

T P  P

R

Work–family conict assumes interdependency

between work and family spheres and that

conict arises from incompatibility between

demands in these domains (e.g., Eby, Casper,

Lockwood, Bordeaux, & Brinley, 2005; Green-

haus & Beutell, 1985). One form of work–family

conict, time-based conict, occurs when time

demands required by one role make it difcult

to meet the expectations of another role given

the scarcity of time. The rise in dual-earner

couples, especially those with children, means

that the work–family interface may be a source

of tension in individual lives and may inuence

how individuals and couples organize their lives

after allocating time to paid work and parenting

(Huston & Vangelisti, 1995).

Because work and family are “greedy”

institutions (Coser & Coser, 1974), they are

often in conict. Both work and family have

high demands and intensive time commit-

ments (Moen & Roehling, 2005; Williams,

2000), requiring “devotion” from participants

(Blair-Loy, 2003) and blurring boundaries

between work and home (Moen, Kelly, &

Lam, 2013), forcing individuals to make con-

strained choices about how to allocate time and

energy (Bird & Rieker, 2008; Jacobs & Gerson,

1998). At the same time, research on “intensive

parenting” (Hays, 1996), “family devotion”

(Blair-Loy, 2003), and “concerted cultivation”

(Lareau, 2003) indicates heightened parenting

demands. In short, the work–family conict

literature suggests that time-based conict may