A Widening Parental Leisure Gap: The Family as a Site for Late Modern Differentiation and Convergence in Leisure Time within Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States

Abstract

This study assesses trends in leisure time by life course and family characteristics in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using national time-use data collected since the mid-1960s, it is hypothesized that important family characteristics are responsible for substantial variation in leisure time that is not recognized in accounts of leisure time among working adults or within national populations. An important finding indicates that leisure is either stable or has increased somewhat in the three Western democracies studied. Social characteristics, family, and employment contexts account for considerable variation in leisure time. Findings demonstrate an increased disadvantage in leisure time among parents of young children after controlling for social background characteristics. Analyses demonstrate the need to qualify accounts of over-work and the double-burden on available leisure time. The perspective of structural constraints integrates neoclassical economic approaches to marginal utility maximization and sociological approaches to gender, and clarifies the impact of changed economic relations that produce less gendered though more differentiated patterns of leisure when parenting.

Misunderstanding Data on Time: a Cautionary Tale

“…This article focuses on the latter. As regards the first (see, for example, Díaz-Méndez and García-Espejo 2014; Flood, Moen 2015; Jarosz 2016; Powell and Craig 2015;Stalker 2011;Tézli and Gauthier 2001) it is sufficient to highlight that the use of regression requires a reference to individual data. Indeed, usually through regression, researchers try to understand how individual (social and personal, as well as other) variables affect participation in an activity and the time spent on that activity.…”

“…The data obtained from time use surveys, starting with Gershuny's study (2000) on changes in the time use models adopted in post-industrial society, are used increasingly in social research. If we consider some recent articles, we can see the variety of topics covered, from the relationship between paid work, domestic work and gender (Blekesaune 2005;Dotti Sani 2012;Romano et al 2012;Moreno-Colom 2015;Powell and Craig;2015, Tézli andGauthier 2009), to adolescents' time use (Zick 2010), to leisure time activities (Jarosz 2016;Stalker 2011), religious practices (Brenner 2011, 2012, Rossi and Scappini 2013, to name but a few. An issue that deserves to be addressed and which usually tend to be neglected by literature concerns how time use data are interpreted.…”

Does Involved Fathering Produce a Larger Total Workload for Fathers Than for Mothers? Evidence from Norway

“…Most of the research in this field applies to so‐called liberal welfare states such as the United States, Australia, and Canada, in which long standard work hours coupled with a lack of work–family reconciliation policies may result in heavy workloads for employed mothers. Shorter standard work hours and more developed work–family policies are expected to facilitate more egalitarian gender patterns of work and family life (Hochschild, ; Stalker, ). In addition, it has been argued that shifts toward more involved fathering could imply that the double burden of market and domestic work is increasingly shared by fathers, at least when the father works full‐time in the labor market (Stalker, ).…”

“…Shorter standard work hours and more developed work–family policies are expected to facilitate more egalitarian gender patterns of work and family life (Hochschild, ; Stalker, ). In addition, it has been argued that shifts toward more involved fathering could imply that the double burden of market and domestic work is increasingly shared by fathers, at least when the father works full‐time in the labor market (Stalker, ). However, less systematic research exists on gender imbalances in parents' total workload from countries with more established work–family reconciliation policies; the recent research that does exist comprises descriptive statistics of all parents, irrespective of work‐time arrangement, and indicates that women and men tend to have similar total workloads with regard to mean number of hours worked (e.g., Molèn ).…”

“…Although many theories try to explain couples' division of paid and unpaid work, theoretical considerations are scarcer in analyses of couples' total workloads. However, Becker's () economic theory on specialization and comparative advantages has been employed in discussions of the partners' total work commitments as well (Sayer et al, ; Stalker, ). The supposition is that partners will have roughly equal total workloads because men's and women's roles are complementary and decisions on the allocation of market work and unpaid family work are made on the basis of efficiency.…”