Mothers’ Work Schedules and Children’s Time with Parents

Prior research shows that mothers’ nonstandard work schedules are associated with worse child developmental outcomes. A key hypothesized mechanism of this relationship is children’s time with parents. Yet, it is unclear how mothers’ work schedules matter for the quantity of time or types of activities in which children engage with their parents. Using unique children’s time-diary data on 808 children with employed mothers from a national survey of households, OLS regression models were used to estimate associations between mothers’ nonstandard schedules and children’s time with their mother—and in two-parent families, total time with either parent—considering both the total amount of time and time engaged in developmentally-supportive activities. We found that mothers’ nonstandard schedules were associated with children spending more time with their mother on weekdays and suggestive evidence that this led to children spending more total time with their mother during the week. However, these positive associations were driven by mothers working irregular schedules with evidence of negative associations for evening and night schedules. The associations between mothers’ work schedules and children’s time with parents also varied by child age and family structure, suggesting that children in two-parent families, and those with more social and economic resources overall, may fare better than their counterparts when their mother works a nonstandard schedule. Findings highlight the importance of examining subgroup differences when estimating the associations between mothers’ work schedules and child and family outcomes.