Only about one-fifth of employed women and men are completely satisfied with the time they spend with their spouse and their children according to a recent study published in the Journal of Family Issues.
“Typically in past studies, full-time workers and parents tend to be more time pressured than those who work part time or who don’t have children,” says Dr. Susan Roxburgh, associate professor of sociology at Kent State University.
In a study funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Roxburgh examined how employment and parenthood influence time pressures pertaining to marital partners and the parental role. She found that men are significantly more likely to want more time with their spouses, while women were more likely than men to say they wanted to improve the quality of time they spend with their spouse. Both women and men equally were likely to say that they wanted to slow down the pace of time spent with their spouse. However when it comes to time spent with children, only women felt that a hectic pace affected the time they spent with their children.
“Current social trends — increasing work hours and consumer debt, declining real wages, and a failure to define time pressure as a social problem — leave little doubt that family time pressures will continue to be a significant part of American family life,” says Roxburgh.
She can be reached at 330-672-4724 or sroxburg@kent.edu .
Journal of Family Issues