Parents' Time Allocation: A Comparison Of Households Headed By One And Two Parents

Abstract

Patterns of recalled time allocation of parents were examined for 29 divorced mothers in one‐parent households and for 30 mothers and 30 fathers married and jointly heading two‐parent households. Correlations of time spent on six catego ries‐employment/unpaid work, household work, family care, leisure, personal maintenance, and a miscellaneous category‐indicated that time spent in em ployment/unpaid work was significantly ( p ≤ 0.05) associated with different cate gories of time use for different groups of parents but had a greater impact on time allocations of divorced mothers than on either group of married parents. Analysis of variance of the six categories of time allocation indicated that divorced mothers and two‐parent fathers were significantly ( p ≤ 0.05) different from two‐ parent mothers in time allocated to employment/unpaid work, household work, and leisure. But mothers in both family types spent significantly ( p < 0.05) more time on care of family members than did two‐parent fathers.