“Time for children”: modern parents’ resource opportunities

Time is a key resource for the children’s human capital formation along with the financial resources, parents’ own human capital and their labor costs. The analysis of time expenditures on parent’s labor can be considered as the only tool allowing to judge its content side, which determines the relevance of research on this problem. The purpose of the article is to analyze parents’ time resources for raising children, the nature and frequency of their joint pastime, as well as factors influencing most significantly on the amount of time expenditures. The information base was the data of questionnaires and focus group studies of parents with children aged 3 to 17 years conducted on the territory of the Vologda Oblast in 2018 and 2019. According to the results of the focus groups, the time resource is recognized as a significant one by all parents in the process of raising a child. However, there is a contradiction between earning money and time spent on communication with the child. Rural parents, women on paternity leave, parents working flexitime, pensioners or parents caring for disabled children were more likely to speak about the sufficiency of the time resource, while men and large cities residents mostly recognized its lacking. A survey of parents of children aged 3-17 years showed that on average, on weekdays, they devote to children 4.7 hours a day, 8.9 hours on weekends. At the same time, the largest number of hours on any day of the week is spent on preschool children. The maximum time spent on communication with a child is typical for women (mothers), full families with one child, families below the poverty line, studying mothers and fathers involved in private business activities. The differences in parents’ time expenditures and types of joint pastime with children on weekdays and weekends are revealed.