CHILDREN AND FAMILIES:TIME MANAGEMENT AND PERCEPTION OF STRESS

Elsa FontainhaISEG – Technical University of Lisbon – Portugal

3rd International Conference International Society for Child IndicatorsUniversity of York, 27th-29th July 2011

Aim of the Research2

The aim of this paper is to shed more light on the subjective well-being of Portuguese children and parents using a unique micro database (Portuguese Time Use Survey, Office of National Statistics, Eurostat guidelines, N=8,389. Includes information about time allocation by activities and time management, perceived stress and preferred time allocation)

 

Keywords: stress; subjective well-being; time use; intra-household data

Children Well-Being and Stress

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Stress can diminish subjective well-being (Ng et al., 2009:258).

Child well-being in Europe: two of the top ten indicators are subjective indicators (Bradshaw and Richardson, 2009:339).

Parental Time and Parental Stress… Parenthood & time (demography, fertility, divorce) Parental time & stress (direct effect?) Parental time & other time trade-off (mother work

mother absent?) Parental time & market work (“babies or bosses”?)

Micro Data- Time Use Survey4

Portuguese TUS 1999, Eurostat GuidelinesDiary + Individual Questionnaire (*) + Household Questionnaire. (*) time management, perceived stress and preferred time allocation

Our research:All sample N=8,389;Subsamples: 3 members hh

mother + father + child < 15 (0-5yrs old; 6-14yrs old); mother + father + child 15+ ; child and parental data

are combined

Stress Questions (examples ; total 16

questions; same as GSS Canada 1998) 5  

Usually do you feel rushed?   Compared to five* years ago (last year , 3 years ago) , do you feel More rushed ….  Do you feel that weekdays (or in your resting days) are just too short to do all the things you want?   On which activity would you choose to spend more time if you could? (refer only one activity; 14 alternative activities)  Do you plan to ‘slow down’ in the coming year? Do you feel that at your professional work you have no time to accomplish all the tasks you had set out to do? Do you feel that at your personal life (excluding hours spent at job)you have no time to do what you want to do?

Empirical Strategy6

Descriptives (by family type) Logit and Probit models (All; Parents)

Dependent variable: stress (1,0) =1 (“Usually do you feel rushed?” Yes.

Always and Often) =0 all other cases

Families (#3) in a Rush I 7

Parents never or rarely had time to do whatever they want to do (Mo 90%-Fa 84%;Mo 91%-Fa 83%)

Stress affects more mothers than fathers

Stress affects more the employed mothers than the non-employed mother

Families (#3) in a Rush 28

Employed mothers’ feeling of lack of time in weekends (frequently + sometimes) is higher (Mo 90%; Fa 29%)

time pressure in professional life is higher concerning fathers than mothers

children age seems not to have a large effect on fathers’ stress however is stronger among the mothers of older children (6-14 years old)

Is Stress an Heritage?9

In the each family children and parents data were combined.

The child feelings of being in a hurry are less frequent than the one felt by parents, but the gender difference is present in both groups.

Stress from parents to children(+15) (an heritage?) similar attitudes concerning slowing down in the future and gender differences

Feelings of Time Crunch Parents and Children (Family 3, Fa+Mo+C) Units: %

10    Parents

 

 Children (+ 15 yrs)

  P E Fa 

E Mo NE Mo C C So C Da

Feel of "being in a hurry" always or often (%)

76 74 80 73 65 63 68

No intention ofslowing down in the future

65 63 62 69 67 58 74

PrivateLife( always +often)

48 47 58 40 41 41 41

Weekend(frequently +sometimes)

62 68 75 40 71 6875

Models: Stress predictors11

Logit and Probit models Dependent variable: stress Explanatory variables (predictors) :

children number and age, gender, age, educational level, time of work, employment status, personal time, family size, etc.

Several specifications ( example >>>)

Empirical Results Stress Models

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ALL8.218

ALL8.389

Women4.556

P 3653

Mo 3350

Education *** *** *** *** **Emp. Status *** ***Child 6-14 *Working Time *** *** * ***Personal Time (*)Age (**) (***)Family size ** *Income **Pseudo R-sq 0.164 0.154 0.208 0.062 0.116

Correctly Classif. 71% 70% 73% 70% 76%

***

p< 0

.001

**

p< 0

.005

* p

<0.

010

Models Results I

The signs of the coefficients (odd ratios) indicate A positive association between employment status

and education. Considering all the population and only the family adopted as reference – couple with one child – in general only 2 phenomena, education and total time of work predict well about 70% of the occurrences

A negative association at the aggregate level for age The signs are the same for mothers and fathers There are differences by gender Children age (less stress related with less 6 years old)

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Models Results

Total time of work, paid and unpaid is one of the fundamental stressors. Alternatively, short personal care time induces stress. Social time reduces it.

As the models are non linear (probit, logit), the coefficients are not constant and the effects of a change in an independent variable depend on the point at which that change occurs (next graphs illustrate)

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Stress – Predictions - Education15

0,40

0,60

0,80

1,00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Educational level

Str

ess

pro

bab

ility

Stress – Predictions - Education16

0,40

0,60

0,80

1,00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Educational level

Str

ess

pro

bab

ility

Changing the educational level and assuming the other variables equal to the mean values. > Level 8 = > 90% probability of stress

Stress – PredictionsTime of Work and Personal time

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0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0,8

0,9

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Hours

Str

es

s p

rob

ab

ility

Time Prof+Fam

Time Pers

Source: Model 5, Logit, N=653

Stress – PredictionsTime of Work and Personal time

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0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0,8

0,9

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Hours

Str

es

s p

rob

ab

ility

Time Prof+Fam

Time Pers

Source: Model 5, Logit, N=653 (Mothers and Fathers 3 members families)

If the personal time (includes sleeping) increases from 9 hours a day to 10 hs, the predicted stress decreases from 81% to 78%

Conclusions I

Perception of stress is affected by gender, education, employment status, working time and personal time, family characteristics and child age.

There are signs that stress is widespread, is growing and is gaining ground among the new generations. It may be being passed from parents to children who live in the same household unit.

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Conclusions II

Children less than 6 years old have no effects on or contribute to reduce stress perceived by parents. By contrast children over 6 years old seem to have some influence on stress, in particular mothers' stress.

Personal time and working time have inverse effects on predicted stress

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Conclusions III

If the parents had more time, the preferred allocation for it is socializing with family (20%). But if the children (+15 yrs) had more time, the preferred allocation for it is socializing with friends (20%). These results converge with Bradshaw and Richardson (2009:344-345).

Entertainment, touristy travel and sports are activities equally preferred by both parents and children.

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