ANN ARBOR—
American children spend an average of 2.5 hours a day with their fathers on weekdays, and 6.2 hours a day on weekends, according to a University of Michigan study that paints a national portrait of paternal behavior in two-parent, intact families.
For about half that time, fathers are directly engaged with their children—playing, eating, shopping, watching television with them or working together around the house. During the rest of the time, dads are nearby and available to their children if needed.
“Mothers still shoulder the lion’s share of the parenting, especially on weekdays,” says W. Jean Yeung, a sociologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research and first author of the study. “But fathers are slowly but surely assuming more active roles in their children’s lives, especially on weekends.”
Studies done in the late ’70s found that the average father spent approximately one-third as much time directly engaged with his children as the average mother did. By the early ’90s, Yeung estimates from these earlier studies, that proportion had jumped to 43 percent. According to the new study, fathers spend about 65 percent as much time with children as mothers do on weekdays, and about 87 percent as much time as mothers do on weekends.
The study is based on time diary data from a nationally representative sample of 1,761 children up to 12 years of age, who lived with both their parents in 1997. The data collection was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. About 40 percent of the total time fathers spend with their children is spent playing, Yeung and colleagues found. On weekdays, they spend almost half an hour playing, including watching television, going to movies, and playing computer and board games as well as rough-and-tumble indoor and outdoor play. On weekends, fathers spend about an hour and twenty minutes playing with their children, on average.
But today’s dads do more than just play. They spend about 27 minutes on weekdays and 51 minutes on weekends on the work of parenting—feeding, bathing, changing diapers and clothes, brushing tangles out of children’s hair. In addition, on weekend days they spend almost half an hour with their children and on weekdays about six minutes, taking care of household business—working around the house, shopping and running errands.
Fathers spend much less time helping children with their homework, reading to them, or getting them to art or music lessons, Yeung found. On weekdays and weekend days, they spend only about five minutes directly engaged with their children in these kinds of achievement-related activities.
Overall, Yeung found that the amount of time children spend with their fathers varies considerably with the child’s age and gender. Fathers spend more time with younger children than with older ones, and on weekdays, they spend about 20 minutes more playing with their sons than they do with their daughters.
A father’s education also affects how much time he spends with his children, and how he spends that time, Yeung found. On weekdays, fathers who have some college education spend eight minutes more in care-giving, 11 minutes more playing, half an hour more on achievement-related activities, and 15 minutes more in social activities with their children, compared with dads with similar characteristics who have not attended college. On weekend days, more educated dads spend 31 minutes more on achievement activities and 11 minutes more on care-giving than their less educated counterparts.
How much a father earns also affects the amount of time he spends with his children, Yeung found. Every $10,000 increase in his earnings is linked with a five-minute decrease in average weekday involvement with his children. But how much a father earns has no relation to how much time he spends with the children on weekends.
Instead, Yeung found, it’s the mother’s income that predicts how much time a father spends with the children on Saturday and Sunday. The more a mother contributes to the total family income, the more time a child spends with dad on the weekends.
It isn’t just a mother’s economic contribution to the family that influences a father’s involvement, however. Yeung found that the more involved a mother is with a child, the more involved the father is, too. “Parents reinforce each other in the ways they interact with children,” she notes.
While the study is based on data from a nationally representative sample of children living with both biological or adoptive parents, Yeung notes that this population represents only about 65 percent of U.S. children. “Paternal involvement in step-parent families and single-parent families headed by mothers is likely to be significantly different,” she says.
Co-authors of the paper on the study are researchers John F. Sandberg, Pamela Davis-Kean, and Sandra L. Hofferth. The data are part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement, directed by Hofferth, a senior research scientist at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Average time in minutes per daychildren spend with their fathers
Directly engaged
On weekdays
On weekends
Caregiving
Play & companionship
Achievement-related
Household activities
Social activities
Other

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TOTAL*
198
Directly engaged OR accessible
Caregiving
Play & companionship
Achievement-related
Household activities
Social activities
Other
190

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TOTAL
149
372
Web: http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/>/span>

Institute for Social ResearchNational Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentPanel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplementhttp://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/