The Washington Post – Melissa Milkie, Kei Nomaguchi and Kathleen Denny
“In a recent study, we looked at whether the amount of time mothers spend with their children is related to children’s and adolescents’ well-being. The study garnered a lot of attention from the public and the media—including some criticism—in part because it had a perhaps surprising finding: We found that the quantity of time mothers spend with children – either engaged in activities with them or just present – doesn’t have a link to the emotional or behavioral health, or math and reading scores, of kids aged 3 to 11. We did find a relationship for teenagers, though, with more quantity time engaged with mothers in activities related to less delinquent behavior among teens and engaged time with mothers and fathers together linked to better behavioral health, math scores and less risky behavior. In New York Times Upshot columns responding to our study, which was first covered in The Post, the economist Justin Wolfers questioned our findings, saying the measure of maternal time we used might not be a reliable indicator because it might capture atypical days. He uses the example of family vacation to Disney World – if a child was randomly sampled on a trip there, the diary might show that the child and mother were together for more hours than if the child were sampled on a more typical day. This could make the data “noisier” and thus harder to detect an effect of mothers’ time even if one did exist. He suggests that the diary data may have missed capturing a positive effect of maternal time on child outcomes.”(more)