1.2 Background

Previous research has examined social change between 1981 and 1997, focusing on the consequences for children’s activities of three major demographic shifts: increased labor force participation of mothers, decline in two-parent families, and increased educational levels of the population (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b; Sandberg and Hofferth, 2001; Sayer, Bianchi and Robinson, 2004). Documented were three associated changes in children’s time. First, nondiscretionary time, the sum of day care/school, personal care, eating, and sleeping, increased and, therefore, discretionary time declined (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b). Second, time in structured activities such as art activities and sports increased and unstructured play, housework, and television viewing declined. Third, time spent in religious attendance declined, but children’s study and reading time rose.

The increase in nondiscretionary time resulted from children spending more time in day care because of increased maternal employment. Mothers were attracted into the work force by higher female wages and encouraged to take increasing responsibility in the financial support of their families by family dissolution and stagnating male wages up through the mid 1990s (Levy, 1998). In contrast, declining play, television viewing, and household work, and increased arts, sports participation, reading, and studying occurred among children of nonworking as well as working mothers; therefore, these were not due to changes in maternal employment, but could represent broad value change (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b). Many ongoing changes reflect the increased educational levels of the population. Mothers with higher education place more value on reading, studying, and constructively using time (Hofferth, 2006). Previous research has pointed to the value parents place, not just on academic success, but also success in developing their children’s physical, social, and creative skills (Dunn, Kinney and Hofferth, 2003). In 1997 children of mothers with some college spent more time reading, participating in youth groups, and studying, and spent less time watching television, compared with children of less educated mothers (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b). Between 1981 and 1997 a decline in religious attendance occurred among those children whose mothers had not completed any college.

What changes took place between 1997 and 2003, a six-year period at the end of the 20th century, that justify examining changes in children’s time over this relative short period of time? There was little of the change in family structure and family size that characterized previous periods (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2003; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2005); however, four critical changes occurred. The first was a revival of conservative values during the 1990s linked with both Democratic and Republican administrations. Second, and associated with this first change, was the passage of welfare reform legislation in 1997 that changed the welfare system to a program of temporary assistance by removing entitlements, setting limits on eligibility, and establishing assisted pathways to independence for low-income mothers. Third, was the passage of legislation in 2001 establishing clear academic benchmarks for primary and secondary students in the U.S. and enforcing testing to evaluate progress on these goals. The fourth was the attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.

A revival of traditional conservative values occurred in the last decades of the 20th century (Ansell, 2001). According to international commentators, the debates in the 2000 and 2004 elections focused more upon moral issues than foreign policy or internal economic policy (The Scotsman, 2004). Republican control over both houses of Congress and the election of a Republican President in both 2000 and 2004 solidified the conservative ascendancy. Abortion rights and gay marriage continue to be hot-button issues in Supreme Court appointments and state legislative initiatives. Increased conservatism may be reflected in activities such as increased attendance at religious services and children’s participation in youth groups, which includes youth activities sponsored by religious institutions.

Increased conservatism was especially evident at the end of the 20th century, with Democratic President Bill Clinton supporting a socially conservative welfare bill in 1997. From the early to the mid 1990s, state legislation tightening welfare eligibility, followed by the passage in 1997 of federal legislation, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act (TANF), increased emphasis on work in welfare programs (Hofferth, Stanhope and Harris, 2002). Subsequently, the employment levels of single mothers increased to those of married mothers (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2003). The proportion of children living in a family with at least one full-time full-year employed parent was at a record high (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2003). In addition, the proportion of children living with two parents employed full-time year round doubled from the early 1990s. This should lead to children spending even more time in school and in day care, with a concomitant decline in discretionary time.

“No Child Left Behind” legislation introduced by Republican President George Bush in 2001 focused upon making schools accountable for continued improvements in the academic progress of their students. This legislation increased emphasis on academic success in school, and raised concern about homework and studying time (Loveless, 2003) at a time when more women were completing four or more years of college (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2008). National tests show gains in mathematics, particularly for younger students, but since 1992 children’s reading test scores have remained about the same (Loveless, 2003). Reading for pleasure is the single most important activity associated with higher children’s test scores in previous studies (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001a), yet little is known about whether the small increases shown in the 1980s and 1990s (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b) have continued. Studying has also been found to be associated with higher achievement, particularly for adolescents (Cooper et al., 1998). Increased emphasis on academic success may have led to children spending increased time both studying and reading for pleasure. A related activity that may have been affected is participation in youth groups, which includes academic clubs, social clubs such as scouts, and service clubs such as safety guards. Extracurricular activities have been associated with greater academic success (Mahoney, Harris and Eccles, 2006).

Finally, the attacks by terrorists on the World Trade Center in September of 2001 increased anxiety about safety and security. The heightened concern about children’s safety in their own communities (Pebley and Sastry, 2004) perhaps further reinforced the choice of supervised activities over free play. In addition, it sent many families back to a search for community, including religious and community institutions.

1.3 Limits on choice of activities

Of course, not all families have access to the resources to pay for children’s extracurricular activities or to live in safe neighborhoods. Access to resources is generally linked with family income, though race/ethnicity may be associated with differential access because residential segregation leads to differential neighborhood and school quality (Phillips and Chin, 2004). Previous research has not shown income to be an important predictor of children’s activities (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001a); children may have access to free or low-cost extracurricular activities through their schools. However, the part played by income compared with other factors needs to be explored using more recent data. The extent to which activities are associated with family income tests whether activities are limited by access and the extent to which they are associated with maternal education tests whether activities are primarily value-based. Race/ethnicity contributes to activity choice through access and through values, as do family structure and maternal employment, and their association with activities helps shed light on the role of resources versus values.

2.2 The 2003 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

In fall 2002 through spring 2003, the participants of the 1997 Child Development Supplement were contacted again and another supplement was administered. Because 5–6 years had passed since they were previously interviewed, few children in the 2003 wave were under age 6. Consequently, to make comparisons of the two cohorts of children, we restricted the sample taken from the 2003 study to those children who were aged 6 to 12 years of age in 2003 and whose families participated in the 2003 Supplement. These children were born between 1990 and 1996. Some of the children from the original 1997 data collection were 13–18 in 2003; however, we did not include them because the 1997 wave did not have a comparable adolescent sample. The total potential number of children eligible to participate was 3,271, of whom 88.9% participated in the 2003 supplement. Weights were calculated to adjust for the original probability of selection and for attribution between 1997 and 2003. Thus the weighted total is representative of children aged 6 to 12 in 1997 or in 2003.¹

2.3 Time diaries

The Child Development Supplements collected complete time diaries for one weekday and one weekend day for 79 percent (2,818) of the 3,563 sample children aged 0 to 12 in 1997 and 82% of the 2,911 children participating in 2003. Comparisons between children who provided a diary and those who did not showed no significant differences on demographic characteristics. The time diary, which was interviewer-administered either to the parent or to the parent and child, asked questions about the child’s flow of activities over a 24-hour period beginning at midnight of the randomly designated day. These questions asked the primary activity that was going on at that time, when it began and ended, and whether any other activity was taking place. Children’s activities were first assigned to one of 10 general activity categories (e.g., sports and active leisure) and then coded into 3-digit subcategories (e.g., playing soccer). Coding was conducted by professional coders employed by the data collection organization; the level of reliability exceeded 90 percent. Time spent traveling for the purpose of engaging in a specific activity was included in that category.

In the coding process, children’s activities were classified into ten general activity categories (paid work, household activities, child care, obtaining goods and services, personal needs and care, education, organizational activities, entertainment/social activities, sports, hobbies, active leisure, passive leisure), and further subdivided into 3-digit subcategories (such as parent reading to a child) that could be recombined in a variety of ways to characterize children’s activities. For comparison purposes, the primary activities of children aged 3 to 12 were classified into the 18 major categories used by Timmer and colleagues in the early 1980s (Timmer, Eccles and O’Brien, 1985) and by Hofferth and Sandberg in 2001 (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001a; Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b). These categories were expanded to separate shopping from household work and to separate day care from school. Youth groups were also distinguished from the broader “visiting” category. Religious attendance does not include meeting time of youth groups in a religious building but reflects attendance at services. Time spent traveling for the purposes of engaging in a specific activity was included in that category. Secondary activities are not measured. For example, time spent doing housework with the television on where housework was the primary activity is not counted as time “watching television”.² Thus, some activities that are often secondary may be underestimated. Given that many activities are occasional, we would not expect all children to engage in most of these on a daily basis. However, we want to abstract from this to describe the activities of American children in general. Because not all children do every activity each day, the total time children spend in an activity is a function of the proportion who engage in the activity and the time those participating spend in it. An estimate of weekly time is computed by multiplying weekday time (including those who do not participate and have zero time) by 5 and weekend day time by 2, after removing a few children who did not have both a weekend and weekday diary.³ Selecting children aged 6 to 12 with two diaries and who were not interviewed over the Christmas break (see below), sample sizes were reduced to 1,448 cases in 1997 and 1,343 cases in 2003, a total of 2,791; missing data on some of the demographic variables further reduced the sample to 2,564 for the multivariate analyses.

Robinson and Godbey (1997) distinguished among contracted time (work, school), committed time (household and child care obligations), personal time (eating, sleeping, personal care), and free time (everything else). We generally use this model with some small changes because we are concerned with children, not adults. Because they have to be in school but don’t have to work, we treat school and day care rather than work as children’s “contracted” or nondiscretionary time. Personal care time is time spent eating, sleeping, and caring for their personal needs. Few children have “committed” time; we include household work as part of their free time because children negotiate their participation in household work from family to family. It is not fixed by society, like school, or by physical needs, like sleep and personal care. In comparison to discretionary time, nondiscretionary time varied little between 1981 and 1997 (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001a). For the purpose of this paper, therefore, free or discretionary time consists of household work, shopping, studying, religious attendance, youth groups, visiting, sports, outdoors activities, hobbies, art activities, play, television viewing, reading, household conversations, and passive leisure (which includes going to movies and sports events as a spectator).

2.4 Variables

Besides the overall descriptive analyses by age of child (based upon age in months at the time of the CDS parent interview), we also conducted multivariate analyses using key demographic characteristics of the family as independent variables, including maternal employment (employed versus not employed), maternal education (some college and completed four years of college or more versus no college), family structure (1 versus 2 parents), family size (1 or 2 versus 3 or more children), and gender of the child. Income was measured by the ratio of family income to needs, the annual income of the family for the previous calendar year divided by the poverty line in dollars for that family size and year. We included a dummy variable for whether the state the child was residing in met the previously described definition of warm state or not. All the definitions were consistent across the two waves of data except that of maternal employment. In 1997, maternal employment was defined as ever-employed in the previous year, whereas, in 2003, maternal employment was defined as employed at the time of the survey. The core PSID data wave that collected employment information was conducted in 2001 and not in 2002; employment at the survey date was deemed to be a better indicator than employment more than a year prior to the survey.

3.2 Time spent in activities by age

The total weekly time in each activity over all children, with nonparticipants (those spending zero time in an activity) included, is shown in Table 2. We first examined discretionary and nondiscretionary time. To obtain discretionary time we summed personal care, eating, sleeping, school and day care and subtracted the total from 168, the total number of hours available in a week. We found a decline in discretionary time between 1997 and 2003 that continued the decline previously found between 1981 and 1997. In 1981 children aged 6 to 12 enjoyed about 57 discretionary hours per week. In 1997, children aged 6 to 12 enjoyed about 50 discretionary hours per week. By 2003, discretionary time had declined two hours to about 48 hours. This is a decline of only 4%, small relative to the 12% decline from 1981 to 1997, but still significant because it occurred over only a 6-year period. The reason for the decline in discretionary time between 1997 and 2003 is the increased amount of time spent sleeping and in school, nondiscretionary activities. Personal care and day care remained constant and eating time declined slightly. In the following we focus only on discretionary time.

A comparison of Tables 1 and ​and22 tests whether changes in discretionary time result from changed participation or from changed time spent among those who participate. For example, the total time spent studying rose both because more children studied and because those who studied spent more time doing it. Including those who did not study at all, on average, children spent 2 hours and 55 minutes studying in 1997 and 3 hours 36 minutes per week studying in 2003, an increase of 23%. The percentage increase in time (23%) was greater than the percentage increase in participation (14%), indicating that time spent studying increased among those who studied (by 8%, not shown). The time spent studying showed a slightly larger rise for children aged 6 to 8 (32%, from 1:58 to 2:36) than for children aged 9–12 (20%, from 3:36 to 4:20).

Reading time for the entire age group of 6 to 12-year-olds increased 34% – from 1:11 to 1:35 – with the increase equal for older and young children. Similar to studying, the overall increase in reading time (34%) exceeded the percent increase in participation (24%), indicating increased time in reading among those who read (6%, not shown).⁵ We checked to see whether increased studying and reading was linked to season of interview. Study time increased in both warm and in nonwarm states, suggesting that it was a real change, whereas reading time increased only in nonwarm states, perhaps reflecting seasonality (not shown).

Declines occurred in several activities. Consistent with decreased participation, time in other passive leisure declined 17% and time spent in household work declined 12%. These declines were primarily due to a decline in participation rather than to a decline in time spent among participants. The 31% decline in time spent in outdoor activities also reflected a decline in participation rather than time spent among participants. In contrast, the 37% decline in time spent in sports reflected both a decline in participation and a decline in time spent among participants. These declines in physical activities occurred in both warm and nonwarm states (not shown). Time spent visiting declined 13%, again due to decline in both participation and time spent.

Because of the declines in several major categories of activities, we expected increases in other activities. We found an increase of 6% in television viewing time, for example. Television viewing time remained constant for 6–8 year olds but increased for 9–12 year olds. Time spent in art activities remained at a low level. Although participation in art activities rose 35% for children aged 6 to 8, there was no overall increase in time spent in art activities for either age group or all children. Time in art activities among those participating remained constant. Sleep time rose by about 2% for all children 6 to 12 years of age.

There were several categories of activities that rose by large percentages. Between 1981 and 1997 the time in religious attendance had been declining (Hofferth and Sandberg, 2001b). Although the overall time spent in attendance at religious services was still low – 1 hour and 44 minutes in 2003 – the time spent rose 25% between 1997 and 2003, reflecting a 23% increase in participation and a 2% increase in time spent among participants. Youth groups also showed an increase. The total time spent in youth groups rose from 44 minutes to about an hour a week between 1997 and 2003. The increase of 36% over the period reflected a 26% increase in participation and a 7% increase in time spent among those participating (not shown). The increased time in religious activities was almost entirely a result of increased participation rather than increased time, whereas increased time in youth groups resulted from both increased participation and increased time spent in it.

3.3 Gender differences in activities

Table 3 shows gender differences in time spent in these activities, again including nonparticipants. In 2003, girls spent more time in household work, shopping, personal care, outdoor, and art activities than did boys. Boys spent more time in sports, hobbies, and play. Boys spent more time studying than girls in 1997, but that differential disappeared completely by 2003. Most of the 1997–2003 trends in activity time were similar for both boys and girls. The one exception was sports. The decline in sports was much larger for boys than for girls. Finally, only girls’ play time declined from 1997 to 2003; boys’ play time stayed the same.