Beyond mothers' time in childcare: Worlds of care and connection in the early life course.

ABSTRACT: Family scholars examining time spent on children's care focus heavily on mothers' allocations to a specific sphere of active caregiving activities. But children's needs for care and supervision involve connection to others; and many others beyond mothers can and do provide care, especially as children grow. Using a "linked lives" approach that centers relationality, we show how time diaries can illuminate children's time spent in "socially connected" care. Using recent (2014-2019) time diary data from the American and the United Kingdom Time Use Surveys, we examine mothers', children's, and teenagers' days to assess two forms of connected care time. First, results show that in addition to childcare time as traditionally measured by time use studies, mothers spend considerable furthe

SUBMITTER: Milkie MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10663121 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature