Understanding the Importance of Parental Time With Children: Comment on Milkie, Nomaguchi, and Denny (2015)

• Author: Susan E. Mayer,Ariel Kalil
• Published date: 01 February 2016
• Date: 01 February 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12261

A K  S E. M University of Chicago

Understanding the Importance of Parental Time

With Children: Comment on Milkie, Nomaguchi,

and Denny (2015)

The premise of the research article by Milkie,

Nomaguchi, and Denny (2015)—“Does the

Amount of Time Mothers Spend With Children

or Adolescents Matter?”—should be evaluated

in the context of a large literature in economics,

sociology, and developmental psychology that

investigates the role of family background in

shaping children’s development. A key fact that

this literature demonstrates is that gaps in educa-

tional attainment between rich and poor children

open up early in life and remain largely constant

through the school years (Duncan & Magnuson,

2011). For instance, at age 4, children from

families in the poorest income quintile score on

average at the 32nd percentile of the national

distribution on math, the 34th percentile in a test

of literacy, and the 32nd percentile on a measure

of school readiness compared to children in

the richest quintile, who scored at the 69th

percentile on math and literacy and at the 63rd

percentile on school readiness (Waldfogel &

Washbrook, 2011). Gaps in conduct problems

and attention/hyperactivity are also apparent,

albeit less pronounced. On measures of hyper-

activity, for instance, children from families in

the poorest income quintile score, on average,

at the 55th percentile of the national distribution

Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of

Chicago, 1155 East 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637

(akalil@uchicago.edu).

KeyWords: childhood/children,unpaid family work, families

and work, time use, work family balance.

(in this case, higher scores indicate higher levels

of behavior problems) compared to children

in the richest quintile, who scored at the 44th

percentile (Waldfogel & Washbrook, 2011).

These gaps change very little over the course of

the school years.

Because these gaps are present well before

children begin formal schooling, one must con-

clude that they arise from differences between

low- and high-income parents in either nature

or nurture or the combination of the two. A

large body of research makes it nearly indis-

putable that nature and nurture interact to pro-

duce almost all outcomes, leaving a large role

for parental inuence on the things that matter

for children’s development.Understanding what

about parenting matters for children’s outcomes

is of key importance to social scientists and pol-

icy makers. Milkie et al. argue that we can rule

out maternal time spent with children because it

does not matter. Their abstract states, “In child-

hood and adolescence, the amount of maternal

time did not matter for offspring behaviors, emo-

tions, or academics” (p. 355). In arguing force-

fully for this conclusion, they imply they are

doing mothers a service by allaying mothers’

perceptions of inadequacy about the amount of

time they spend with their children.

There are important problems with the

authors’ theoretical framework, measures, esti-

mation models, and interpretation of the results.

Consequently, the Milkie et al. article provides

little insight into the question of whether mater-

nal time with children is benecial to child

262 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (February 2016): 262–265

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12261