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Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

economist.com

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Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#281

Post by NLips »

chrisseaton wrote: post #279
ordu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learnt from psychologist that there are ways to help newborn to get asleep. Newborn is in a very uncomfortable conditions for him. He used to be in a liquid environment. It was very noisy environment: there was a lot of sounds made by mothers body, digesting and more importantly heartbeat. It was dark there. But now he is on the air, he need to breathe, he hears silence with interruptions by some sharp sounds (in t…

Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s ‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an article.

The whole comment is written with fewer articles than you'd expect for good English - my guess is that the commenter is not a native speaker, rather than trying to be cutesy.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#282

Post by cperciva »

kelukelugames wrote: post #5

> One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59. I spend 100+ minutes every day changing diapers. Actually that's not true, most of my time is spent trying to put the stupid newborn to go to sleep. I…

> I thought paternity leave was going to be chill

I've heard this from a few people, and I don't understand it. The whole idea of paternity leave is to allow you to care for a newborn -- it's not supposed to be a vacation!

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#283

Post by tome »

chrisseaton wrote: post #279
ordu wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learnt from psychologist that there are ways to help newborn to get asleep. Newborn is in a very uncomfortable conditions for him. He used to be in a liquid environment. It was very noisy environment: there was a lot of sounds made by mothers body, digesting and more importantly heartbeat. It was dark there. But now he is on the air, he need to breathe, he hears silence with interruptions by some sharp sounds (in t…

Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s ‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an article.

> sounds like broken English

There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages and not English.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#284

Post by saiya-jin »

k__ wrote: post #280

I know many parents were at least the father started working more and often far away from their family. Sure they need more money with children, but how good is the money if you only see them on the weekend? Sometimes it sounds like an excuse so they don't have to hang around with them, but maybe I'm just bitter, because my father left me when I was 6 and even the years before I barely saw him :/

I am sorry for your experience, I hope you did/will overcome it and forgive him for this. There is huge power and freedom for you once you do, albeit it must be hard.

I think children don't require huge amount of time, rather quality (100% focus) and often (ie 1 hour daily is much better than 7 hours at once 1x a week - effectively it should be much more though)

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#285

Post by Illotus »

Troyboy wrote: post #19

How is this even possible when nearly all households requiring dual incomes?

What? Working 8 hours a day leaves about 8 hours of freetime to spend with your kids even leaving 8 hours for sleep. Even if you change the numbers there is plenty of time to spent, it is just matter of prioritizing.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#286

Post by jdietrich »

sbinthree wrote: post #180
robertwiblin wrote: post #64

"One of Galinsky's more surprising findings centered around a question she posed to both children and parents: "If you were granted one wish to change the way your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?" Some 56 percent of parents anticipated that their children would want more time with their parents and for their parents to spend less time at work, yet only 10 percent of the childre…

This makes sense. I would much rather have less and more positive interactions with my parents than more or more stressful ones. Some people seem to have a "my parent was never around" complex but that usually seems to involve some combination of 1. Parent completely absent, not home at night, not reliable or away for extended periods working or 2. Parent missing key, meaningful events like the "dance recital" trope…

I think that dependability is the key point. "My parents were never around" often translates to "my parents couldn't be relied on when it really matters". You don't have to spend 24/7 with your kids to establish the secure belief that you'll drop everything to help them; conversely, you can be present a great deal without ever giving the sense that you're a reliable resource.

I think this is what underpins the "dance recital" trope, or the similar "not getting picked up from soccer practice". It's not so much that you weren't there, but that you chose to prioritise something else or failed to honour a previous commitment.

Especially as children move into adolescence and start to develop independence, they want to know that their parents will provide a safe harbour to return to. I think that children are remarkably perceptive when assessing who can be trusted to get them out of a bad situation or handle a difficult conversation. Without necessarily realising it, parents send subtle messages every day about where their priorities really lie.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#287

Post by GordonS »

cperciva wrote: post #282
kelukelugames wrote: post #5

> One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59. I spend 100+ minutes every day changing diapers. Actually that's not true, most of my time is spent trying to put the stupid newborn to go to sleep. I…

> I thought paternity leave was going to be chill I've heard this from a few people, and I don't understand it. The whole idea of paternity leave is to allow you to care for a newborn -- it's not supposed to be a vacation!

I think a lot of fathers-to-be imagine their newborns spending most of the time sleeping, leaving lots of time for work/learning/whatever. In reality, it's rather unlikely you'll be getting more than a few hours sleep yourself!

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#288

Post by jdietrich »

goialoq wrote: post #263
robertwiblin wrote: post #64

"One of Galinsky's more surprising findings centered around a question she posed to both children and parents: "If you were granted one wish to change the way your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?" Some 56 percent of parents anticipated that their children would want more time with their parents and for their parents to spend less time at work, yet only 10 percent of the childre…

From the linked blogpost: > My interpretation: Spending time with our kids has become a chore because we're doing so much of it. What a bizarre speculation, clearly a case of motivated reasoning. It's equally plausible that parents are working too hard/long and so when they see their kids they are cranky and irritable in the few moments they have with their children, and kids naturally want their parents to be better…

Your explanation is not supported by the data.

Firstly, the headline figure is that parents are spending twice as much time with their children, so this isn't simply a case of family time being squeezed by time spent at working.

Secondly, the average number of hours worked has been stable or slightly declining, with all but the most highly educated men seeing a reduction in working hours. Reductions in the amount of non-market work (shopping, household chores etc) mean that there has been a substantial increase in the amount of discretionary leisure time enjoyed by the average American. More women are participating in the labor market, but labor market participants of both genders enjoy significantly more leisure time.

Most Americans have more free time than ever before and are choosing to spend more of it with their children. The one exception is amongst the most highly educated, which (given the demographics of HN) may be why this fact jars with your personal experience.

https://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2006/wp0602.pdf

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#289

Post by chrisseaton »

tome wrote: post #283
chrisseaton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s ‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an article.

> sounds like broken English There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages and not English.

Lots of native English speakers write ‘baby’ without an article.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#290

Post by dragandj »

tome wrote: post #283
chrisseaton wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s ‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an article.

> sounds like broken English There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages and not English.

As a native speaker of a Slavic language I can confirm that articles are something that I often seem to be getting wrong when I am writing (and speaking) English.

They seem like an unneeded extra, from the perspective of Slavic languages, where the information that they give is most often easily inferred from the context or the construction of the sentence.

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