Transcript Children and Families: Time Management and Perception of Stress

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES:
TIME MANAGEMENT AND
PERCEPTION OF STRESS
Elsa Fontainha
ISEG – Technical University of Lisbon – Portugal
3rd International Conference
International Society for Child Indicators
University of York, 27th-29th July 2011
Aim of the Research
2
Keywords: stress; subjective well-being; time use; intra-household
data
The aim of this paper is to shed more
light on the subjective well-being of
Portuguese children and parents using a
unique micro database (Portuguese Time
Use Survey, Office of National Statistics,
Eurostat guidelines, N=8,389. Includes
information about time allocation by
activities and time management, perceived
stress and preferred time allocation)
Children Well-Being and Stress
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Stress can diminish subjective well-being
(Ng et al., 2009:258).
 Child well-being in Europe: two of the top
ten indicators are subjective indicators
(Bradshaw and Richardson, 2009:339).
 Parental Time and Parental Stress…

Parenthood & time (demography, fertility, divorce)
 Parental time & stress (direct effect?)
 Parental time & other time trade-off (mother work
mother absent?)
 Parental time & market work (“babies or bosses”?)

Micro Data- Time Use Survey
4
Portuguese TUS 1999, Eurostat Guidelines
 Diary + Individual Questionnaire (*) + Household
Questionnaire.
 (*) time management, perceived stress and
preferred time allocation
Our research:
 All sample N=8,389;Subsamples: 3 members hh
 mother + father + child < 15 (0-5yrs old; 6-14yrs
old);
 mother + father + child 15+ ; child and parental
data are combined
Stress Questions (examples ; total 16
questions; same as GSS Canada 1998)
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Usually do you feel rushed?
Compared to five* years ago (last year , 3 years ago) , do you feel
More rushed ….
Do you feel that weekdays (or in your resting days) are just too short to do all the
things you want?
On which activity would you choose to spend more time if you could? (refer only one
activity; 14 alternative activities)
Do you plan to ‘slow down’ in the coming year?
Do you feel that at your professional work you have no time to accomplish all the tasks
you had set out to do?
Do you feel that at your personal life (excluding hours spent at job)you have no time to
do what you want to do?
Empirical Strategy
6
Descriptives (by family type)
 Logit and Probit models (All; Parents)
 Dependent variable: stress (1,0)

(“Usually do you feel rushed?” Yes.
Always and Often)
 =0 all other cases
 =1
Families (#3) in a Rush I
7

Parents never or rarely had time to do
whatever they want to do
 (Mo
90%-Fa 84%;Mo 91%-Fa 83%)
Stress affects more mothers than
fathers
 Stress affects more the employed
mothers than the non-employed
mother

Families (#3) in a Rush 2
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
Employed mothers’ feeling of lack of time
in weekends (frequently + sometimes) is
higher
 (Mo
90%; Fa 29%)
time pressure in professional life is
higher concerning fathers than mothers
 children age seems not to have a large
effect on fathers’ stress however is
stronger among the mothers of older
children (6-14 years old)

Is Stress an Heritage?
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In the each family children and parents data
were combined.
 The child feelings of being in a hurry are
less frequent than the one felt by parents,
but the gender difference is present in
both groups.
 Stress from parents to children(+15) (an
heritage?) similar attitudes concerning
slowing down in the future and gender
differences
10
Feelings of Time Crunch Parents
and Children (Family 3, Fa+Mo+C) Units: %
Parents
Children
(+ 15 yrs)
P
E Fa
E Mo
NE Mo
C
C So
C
Da
Feel of "being in a hurry"
always or often (%)
76
74
80
73
65
63
68
No intention of
slowing down in the future
65
63
62
69
67
58
74
Private
Life( always +often)
Weekend
(frequently +sometimes)
48
47
58
40
41
41
41
62
68
75
40
71
68
75
Models: Stress predictors
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
Logit and Probit models
 Dependent variable: stress
 Explanatory variables (predictors) :
children number and age, gender, age,
educational level, time of work,
employment status, personal time,
family size, etc.
 Several specifications ( example >>>)
Empirical Results
Stress Models
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*** p< 0.001 ** p< 0.005 * p<0.010
Education
ALL
8.218
ALL
8.389
Women P 3
4.556
653
Mo 3
350
***
***
***
***
*
***
**
***
***
***
*
***
Emp. Status
Child 6-14
Working Time
Personal Time
Age
(*)
Income
(**)
**
**
Pseudo R-sq
0.164
0.154
0.208
0.062
0.116
Correctly Classif.
71%
70%
73%
70%
76%
Family size
(***)
*
Models Results I
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
The signs of the coefficients (odd ratios) indicate
 A positive association between employment status
and education. Considering all the population and
only the family adopted as reference – couple with
one child – in general only 2 phenomena, education
and total time of work predict well about 70% of the
occurrences
 A negative association at the aggregate level for age
 The signs are the same for mothers and fathers
 There are differences by gender
 Children age (less stress related with less 6 years old)
Models Results
14

Total time of work, paid and unpaid is one of the
fundamental stressors. Alternatively, short personal care
time induces stress. Social time reduces it.

As the models are non linear (probit, logit), the
coefficients are not constant and the effects of a change
in an independent variable depend on the point at which
that change occurs (next graphs illustrate)
Stress – Predictions - Education
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Stress probability
1,00
0,80
0,60
0,40
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Educational level
9
10 11
12
Stress – Predictions - Education
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Stress probability
1,00
0,80
0,60
Changing the
educational
0,40
level and assuming
1
2the3
4
other variables equal to
the mean values.
> Level 8 = > 90%
probability of stress
5
6
7
8
Educational level
9
10 11
12
Stress – Predictions
Time of Work and Personal time
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Stress probability
1
0,9
0,8
0,7
Time Prof+Fam
0,6
Time Pers
0,5
0,4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Hours
Source: Model 5, Logit, N=653
Stress – Predictions
Time of Work and Personal time
If the personal time
(includes sleeping)
increases from 9 hours a
day to 10 hs, the
predicted stress
decreases from 81% to
78%
Time Prof+Fam
18
Stress probability
1
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,6
Time Pers
0,5
0,4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Hours
Source: Model 5, Logit, N=653 (Mothers and Fathers 3 members
families)
Conclusions I
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Perception of stress is affected by gender,
education, employment status, working
time and personal time, family
characteristics and child age.
 There are signs that stress is widespread,
is growing and is gaining ground among
the new generations. It may be being
passed from parents to children who live
in the same household unit.

Conclusions II
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Children less than 6 years old have no
effects on or contribute to reduce stress
perceived by parents. By contrast children
over 6 years old seem to have some
influence on stress, in particular mothers'
stress.
 Personal time and working time have
inverse effects on predicted stress

Conclusions III
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

If the parents had more time, the preferred
allocation for it is socializing with family
(20%). But if the children (+15 yrs) had more
time, the preferred allocation for it is socializing
with friends (20%). These results converge
with Bradshaw and Richardson (2009:344-345).
Entertainment, touristy travel and sports are
activities equally preferred by both parents and
children.