A new research paper by economists Valerie and Garey Ramey at the University of California-San Diego found American parents are spending more time with their children—a reversal from prior decades—and that college-educated parents now spend twice as much as time with their children as less-educated parents do.
In assessing why this is happening, the Rameys hypothesize that better-educated parents put in those extra hours with their children in an effort to get their progeny into elite colleges, based on the perception that there is a higher return to attending a “good” college. They call this phenomenon the “rug rat race” and base it on a comparison to parents in Canada (Canada does not have the same “steep prestige hierarchy” of universities as the U.S. does, according to the authors).
It’s an interesting study, but there may be something deeper here than college admission worries. My teen/formative years were in the late 1970s and 1980s—the period in time when women were repeatedly told that we could have it all—anyone remember those perfume ads for Enjoli? (“I can bring home the bacon… Fry it up in a pan… And never ever let you forget you’re a man, ‘Cause I’m a woman…with Enjoli.”) Even fashion back then had a feminist undertone: career women dressed in masculine, pinstriped pant-suits with big shoulder pads. Like the Enjoli ad, women were told we could work our way up the corporate ladder, and then at some point, have kids, no problem. Once we had our families, we could still keep working and be successful. We could balance it all, no problem, either.
Well, as many of us started having kids (and we delayed it much longer than prior generations—a new CDC study has even found the recession is causing the birthrate to drop for all women—except those in their 40s), and tried to continue working, we discovered much to our chagrin it was actually hard to “have it all”—and to do it all well.
Once we get back to work post childbirth, we often are thinking about our kids, but the reverse is also true: when we are with our kids, we are thinking about work.
Most highly educated women I know with kids have either stopped working completely, are working part-time, or have chosen jobs that are extremely flexible in terms of hours, telecommuting and overall levels of stress. Our generation of women got to the point of having it all and deciding it wasn’t worth it; our kids were suffering by our disjointedness.
But I also think there is something else going on here. It’s a cultural shift. Back to … dare I say it … family values (perhaps a more modern, updated set?) Maybe the highly educated parents of today are choosing to spend time with their children because they actually enjoy parenting and want to watch their kids grow up and be an active participant in their lives? The feminists of the past helped women achieve so much career freedom, and my generation of women is grateful. But, some of us experienced being “latchkey kids,” and don’t want that for our own children. Thus, our rebellion has been against some of the things for which the feminists fought.
It’s also true that some of this time shift reflects a change in the men in our generation. Kids could be spending more time with a parent because there is a lot more co-parenting going on, meaning that moms and dads are equally involved in their kids’ activities (i.e., there are now soccer moms—and soccer dads). It is much more acceptable in today’s society for men to leave work early to go coach or do some kid-centric activity than it used to be, just as more men take some paternity leave (without embarrassment).
The Rameys found a lot of the time parents spend with their older kids is while chauffeuring them to various activities. This may show a cultural shift due to increases in crime or the perception of more crime (violent crime rates seem to have peaked in the early 1990s). I grew up in a large city and was routinely told to take the bus home, starting in 4th grade. Today, I can’t imagine sending my fifth-grade daughter on public transportation by herself. I worry about perverts, and I also worry about her ability to know where to get off. I even worry about letting her wander off in a store since there have been a number of kidnappings at big box stores in my area over the last few years.
Interestingly, according to Betsey Stevenson at the University of Pennsylvania, that extra time shift devoted to kids that the Rameys have identified is worth about $250 billion. I know in today’s day and age with $700 billion TARP payments, trillion dollar health care legislation, and an $880 billion “stimulus,” that doesn’t seem like much any more. But maybe we can get 5 years’ worth of parents’ time devoted to reducing the deficit while we are at it. We are going to have to pay for it, one way or another.
Nordquist, a mother of three, held senior positions in the George W. Bush administration and currently works at a Washington, D.C., think tank.