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Three Hours More A Week Than Workers? PLEASE!!

More School, Structure Found in '90s Child's Life

By Barbara Vobejda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 9, 1998; Page A02

American children today spend less time watching television than they did in the early 1980s and less time eating, but more time in sports and slightly more time on schoolwork, according to a national study released today.

Among the most striking changes is the increase in time spent at school, up by an average of more than 90 minutes weekly since 1981. That is happening not because academic school days are longer, but because more children are in preschool and before- and after-school child care programs, researchers said.

The study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, the first look in nearly two decades at how the nation's children spend their time, offers a detailed portrait of modern family life. It shows that the entry of more women into the labor force has had a real effect on childhood schedules, causing a sharp decline in the hours children can spend playing tag outside, for example, or in other unplanned activities.

Free time left after going to school, eating and sleeping, the study found, has decreased from 40 percent of a child's day in 1981 to 25 percent last year.

"Children are affected by the same time crunch that their parents are affected by," said Sandra L. Hofferth, a senior research scientist at the institute. "Parents are busy and children are spending much more time in structured environments."

The researchers do not conclude that this transformation in family routines is necessarily bad for children. In fact, said Hofferth, who headed the study, In traditional families where the father works and the mother stays at home, parents spend 22 hours on average engaged with their children each week, the study found, compared with 19 hours in families where both parents work and 9 hours for single-parent families.

After collecting minute-by-minute time diaries from the families of 3,600 children, researchers were able to describe in detail how a typical child's week plays out, from the average 74 hours sleeping to the nine hours spent consuming meals.

Overall, children average about 90 minutes in front of the television set on weekdays, down from two hours in 1981. But TV still occupies far more of a child's time than does schoolwork or reading. Average study time on weekdays has gone up for boys from 14 minutes to 21 minutes since the early '80s. For girls, the figure has gone from 19 minutes to 22 minutes. And reading at home, even for 12-year-olds, occupies less than an hour and a half each week, no more than in 1981.

Boys spend twice as much time as girls playing sports, while girls are more likely to participate in dance or other artistic endeavors, visit friends and help out more with housework.

One fixture of modern life -- computers -- has had only a moderate impact on the average child's day. The typical 6-year-old, for example, spends a half-hour each week on the computer, while a 12-year-old spends an hour and 12 minutes.

The time diaries are part of a much larger study that looks at how today's children are faring and what factors are helping or hurting development. For example, researchers found that every hour of reading each week translates into a half-point increase in achievement test scores, while each hour of watching TV decreases scores by a tenth of a point on tests in which the mean score is 100.

The study suggests that the amount of time parents spend with their children is less important than how they spend it and the quality of their relationships, Hofferth said.

"The evidence is fairly compelling now that the mere fact of having working parents doesn't create problems for children," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. "We're clearly putting more structure in kids' lives, but there's not much evidence that it's hurting them."

A Child's Week

Here is a breakdown of the estimated average number of hours and minutes children spend weekly in major activities.

Age

Activity 3-5 6-8 9-12

Sleeping 76:19 70:44 67:34

School 20:05 33:54 33:50

Playing 17:00 11:26 8:44

Television 13:28 12:38 13:36

Eating 9:07 7:58 7:54

Personal care 8:39 7:58 7:54

Household work 6:10 5:05 6:06

Sports 2:56 4:38 5:14

Visiting 4:13 3:25 3:41

Other leisure 3:00 2:32 3:34

Studying 0:36 2:03 3:37

Church 1:05 1:21 1:28

Reading 1:25 1:14 1:16

Art activities 1:05 0:45 0:56

Family talks 0:45 0:32 0:28

Market work 0:00 0:04 0:15

Hobbies 0:04 0:04 0:09

SOURCE: Sandra L. Hofferth, University of Michigan

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Comp

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