In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes ….. while moms in 2012 …104 minutes per day.…. 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them.
According to Journal of Marriage and Family
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Yes. We spent more time with our kids than our parents did with us, and our kids spend more time with their kids than we did with them.
Yeah, we were the “go outside and come back for dinner” or latchkey generations. We (mostly my wife) spent a lot more time with our kids than our parents spent with us.
Not more time than I spent with them but a lot more time than my parents spent with me
I’m Gen X
My kids are millinials
Both of my children are good parents as are their spouses.
I was a working mom from the time my younger child was 2, but we had a good time. I think I became a better mom after going back to school and becoming a nurse. I didn’t have as much time with my children, but the quality of the time we spent together was much better.
My children and their spouses work, but they love their children and spend time with them.
My ex is the one who took off and hardly saw the children.
My dad was a traveling salesman so I almost never saw him and then he died when I was 23 and away at college. Don’t remember doing anything with him at all. My mother was pretty much a functioning alcoholic and party girl and really didn’t like kids all that much so she wasn’t really there much. never had a birthday party, family vacation, anything like that. I was much more involved with my kids life and let them know they were loved, unlike my parents.
my daughter decided to not have kids and my son adopted rather than bring someone into this world. He is the main caregiver.
I spent a lot of time with my kids, they both played hockey and i coached . When my youngest was in high school he played 3 sports so I was always driving him to practice. My wife was a stay at home mom when they were young.
I’m 74M. And the numbers you quote don’t jive with my memories. So I am not sure how to answer you.
Of course I can only speak of my experiences. When I was a kid while we did enjoy more autonomy about going out to play without a parent looking over your shoulder every moment there were the other times.
We were all expected to do chores during which time we also chatted with a mom or dad. Breakfast and dinner were almost always a family event with everyone present. And talking about the day, events and things in their lives, and so forth. Lunch was more iffy in that if you were home at all, it was dash in grab a sandwich, gulp it down and then get busy with whatever. There was mom teaching the girls (and me as I was six years the oldest) how to cook, how to sew. how to wash clothes properly. Cooking and washing clothes, and then ironing them took time …. lots of it.
Evenings after dinner was normally family time. We didn’t have TV the first 10 years of my life. But even later on when we did, it was watched together. But it was not only TV or radio. We colored together, played cards or board games together. Or maybe it would be the time when Dad, or grandpa, taught me to whittle something, or how to braid leather or rope, make a fancy paper plane, or make a kite. Or make a fishing lure. Or so forth. The girls, and I, also learned and practiced knitting, embroidery and the like. Yeah, I learned those things. I liked making stuff. And of course there was homework time, with adult helping as needed, but watching to make sure it was done. We had to do homework in the living room or kitchen, so parent knew we were doing it and not just goofing off. My point being that within my parents’ family it wasn’t just turn on the TV and zombie out.
Sundays were always family day. If weather allowed, we not only went to church together but back at home usually the neighbors or other relatives came over, the ladies doing potluck, or each bringing side while the fires were started in the brick barbeque dad and grandpa built, and meat was cooked. Games and chat all about. Often enough games that included both adults and kids. Races, kite flying, throwing contests of all sort (who was most accurate or could throw the farthest), bean bag toss, tag, Blind Man’s Bluff, hop scotch, hide and seek, and the inevitable cards and board games.
Bad weather? I can remember the house full of people all coloring, drawing, painting, and the usual cards and board games.
In any event my wife and I, and our children with their children, spend more time with our kids than the numbers you listed.
Heck no. My kids did not go to day care and neither did I.
I don’t know. I’ve never pulled out a stopwatch and ‘timed myself’ with my kids.
No.
I was a SAHM for most of the time my kids were growing up; I spent a lot of time with my kids. We also did things as a family. It was the same for me growing up. My mom stayed home, and my dad worked. We had a close family and spent a lot of time together, a fair amount of it doing fun activities or going places together.
My kids spend less time with their kids, but only because both parents work full time. They love them just as much.
This question feels like you’re trying to prove some sort of point; I’m just not sure what it is.
My dad was the Mayor and seldom home. My older sisters came to all my team sports. They would take turns pitching for my batting practice. There was no Title 9 yet for them.
I went to all my kids’ athletic events and practices, did the same for my granddaughters and last fall I went to all my great-granddaughter’s soccer games.
I wished I could have gone to Europe to see my youngest granddaughter play basketball professionally in Europe. Sad I missed out. My daughter and her husband flew over a couple of times.
I wore out car tires and spent a fortune on gas driving around the eastern US following my kids and granddaughters college basketball teams and probably sat in every arena. I called in sick from work tournament time.
I really REALLY question that study, or the figures you quoted. 54 minutes wouldn’t get a kid fed, bathed, read to, dressed, played with, sung to, or much of anything else. Even working full-time in a demanding job I sure as hell spent a lot more time with my twins than 54 minutes. The dad time is ridiculous, too.
Maybe the “study” was quoting time in a Romanian orphanage. I call bullshit.
I think it is also about how people viewed parenting and their relationship with their children.
My parents were very involved parents in the sense that we ate dinner together; they took us places ranging from museums, ballet, Broadway shows, circuses to parks, beach etc. They were very on top of how we were doing in school based on report cards and also made sure we went to the dentist, doctor and had clothing that was clean. Very functional middle class upbringing.
However they weren’t involved in our daily lives to the extent modern parents were. So long as our grades were good and we weren’t arrested or pregnant, they assumed everything was fine with us.
I didn’t go to my parents with any kind of problems as I relied on my friends for emotional support and advice – although of course my parents helped with major “objective” decisions.
When I went to college I spoke to them briefly once a week and I had no desire to communicate with them or come to them with any issues or problems – again this was what my friends were for.
I want to stress that my relationship was very typical of my friends and our family life was not dysfunctional. In a crisis or if I needed anything they were there for me. When I was busted in California at 18 for an illegal campfire they were my first call and they bailed me and my friend out and hired an attorney 🙂
Both my dad and my ex husband were not much involved. My youngest son is an awesome dad. When his first daughter was born, we went to visit at the hospital. He was cuddling her against his naked chest while his wife was recovering from an emergency cesarean. He’s been wonderfully involved since then. He’s at both kids recitals and competitions taking videos of every moment. My ex never even attended any of his kids events. My son was rocking his babies to sleep all the time when they were little. Oldest son’s wife was infertile, but he’s an awesome uncle to all his nephew’s and neices