Although public debate ensues over whether parents or nonparents have higher levels of emotional well-being, scholars suggest that being a parent is associated with a mixed bag of emotions. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey for the years 2010, 2012, and 2013 and unique measures of subjective well-being that capture positive and negative emotions linked to daily activities, we “unpack” this mixed bag. We do so by examining contextual variation in the parenting emotions gap based on activity type, whether parents’ children were present, parenting stage, and respondent’s gender. We found that parenting was associated with more positive emotions than nonparenting, but also more negative emotions. This pattern existed only during housework and leisure, not during paid work. Moreover, patterns in positive emotions existed only when parents’ children were present; patterns in negative emotions were primarily observed during earlier stages of parenting. Results were similar for men and women.

Although gender gaps in parenting time endure for parents of young children, and in physical and developmental care, men’s changing attitudes toward egalitarian gender roles suggest that gender disparities in parenting time may have closed in some contexts: particularly, in other shared activities with children, when children are school aged or older, and among higher educated parents. We investigate these possibilities using weekday time diary data from a nationally representative survey of parents participating in the American Time Use Survey (2003-2014; N = 28,698). In contrast to our expectations, we find that the gender gap in parents’ time with children persists when children are older, and even grow for some activities; extend to several other forms of shared parent–child time; and is often largest for higher educated parents. At the same time, there are notable contexts in which the gaps disappear, although they encompass the most pleasant activities, and least intensive stages of parenting.

A drive-through customer pays for the order of the next customer in line, sparking a cascade of nearly 400 customers paying it forward (Phippen 2014). A farmer helps build a neighbor's barn without payment, confident that neighbors will help him when the need arises, a tradition with roots in colonial America and still practiced in Amish and Mennonite communities (Kadushin 2012). A prisoner shares his drugs with fellow inmates, not knowing whether or when they will reciprocate (Mjåland 2014). A researcher agrees to do a time-intensive peer review, with the understanding-or perhaps hope-that future papers she submits will receive similarly careful reviews. A hunter-gatherer gives meat to others, without 747290A SRXXX10.

This study examines whether-and if so how-gender composition of children matters for mothers' and fathers' well-being during parenting activities. Background: Despite that parents interact with girls and boys differently and spend different amounts of time with them, scholars have paid little attention to how gender composition of children matters for parental well-being. Method: The study assessed parental well-being during time spent with children, across four