Once upon a Time in Parenthood: Adolescents' Attitudes Toward Parents' Time with Children, 1991–2019

Abstract

Recent decades have seen increases in parents' time with children and their endorsement of time‐intensive parenting, but little is known about adolescents' attitudes regarding the time that parents in general (i.e., not their own parents specifically) spend with children. We analyze separate attitudinal measures of fathers' time and mothers' time with children using data from the eighth and tenth grade Monitoring the Future surveys for 1991 to 2019. Overall, the majority of adolescents agree that most fathers and mothers, but especially fathers, should spend more time with their children than they do. Black girls are the most likely to agree that fathers and mothers should spend more time with their children while white boys are the least likely. The largest increases in agreement that fathers and mothers should spend more time with their children are found for white girls. Exploring parental education and mother's employment as potential mechanisms for these trends, we find that attitudes about the time most fathers and mothers should spend with children have converged across parental education levels and maternal employment statuses over the years of our study.