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A paper from the Education Gradients in Parents’ Child-Care Time by G.M Dotti Sani and J. Treas has revealed that parents are spending a lot more time with their kids than they used to, so much so, that some countries have doubled the time spent.
One analysis of 11 countries around the globe estimated that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965, but 104 minutes in 2012.
Men are still doing less than woman on the child-care front, but they are doing much more than they used to. Their child-caring time has more than tripled from 16 minutes a day to 59. All countries had a positive trend when looking at father’s spending time with their kids.
Slovenia and France seem to have the slowest increase of university-educated dads taking care of their offspring. Denmark and Britain, on the other hand, showed a steady increase.
The Economist notes that the gap has gotten larger between working-class and middle-class parents.
In 1965, mothers with and without a university education spent around the same amount of time on child care. By 2012, the more educated mothers were spending half an hour more per day - with the exception of France - where the child care rate between educated and non-educated mothers has been on a slow, downward trend.
Britain and Denmark excel in maternal childcare, with an extremely positive trend shown by the graphs. Denmark’s uneducated to educated mother are basically shown as evenly met.
Despite the occasional downward trends, it’s still safe to say that parents are overall spending more time with their children than in the 60s; and that’s definitely a good thing.