Chapter 7Family Time Together

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Giacomo Vagni

Family is one of the most important institutions in contemporary Britain. Family members are still the main providers of care, as well as the main providers of moral and economic support. Everyday life itself is structured around the schedules of household members. Family relations have changed dramatically over the last century. But although a lot has been written about changes in family demographics (marriage, divorce, cohabitation, fertility), much less is known about how time together has changed in the recent past. What exactly has changed from a time-use perspective is more difficult to assess than one might think. One of the most interesting findings stemming from such research over the past couple of decades has been the important increases in time that parents are spending in childcare activities (see Chapter 5). However, exactly how much time couples and families spend with each other, and what they do together, remains largely unresearched.

Most of our time when we are not at work is spent, for those in couples, with the partner, and, for those who are parents of young children, with those children. The 2014–15 data tell us that couples in the sample selected from the UK 2014–15 data for this chapter spend about 7 hours together between the hours of 7am and 10am, when averaged over the week. But families with young children spend about 5 to 10 hours together, and parents spend about 5 hours alone with their children. Of course, important differences exist between men and women, as well as between workers, students or retirees. Nonetheless, these simple figures show how important our family members are to us. In this chapter we explore how time together with the partner and the children has changed between 2000 and 2015. This choice of timeframe is significant because it covers the period just before and just after the technological revolution involving personal computers and other devices. The jury is still out on the impact of this revolution on our family time. Many people are familiar with kids escaping early from family meals to get back on to social media with their friends, or to that computer game they had to abandon when dinner was announced. Do parents and children spend less time together because the kids are in their bedrooms using their devices? Do family meals get cut short because of the call of our electronic devices (and who’s to say that parents are not guilty of this too?)? Certainly the popular media is full of gloomy pronouncements about the impact of this revolution on our family time.

The common-sense definition of what constitutes a ‘family’ still revolves around the presence of children. The subject of this chapter is couples with children aged under 8 living together in a single household. One of the most important changes in contemporary families is that there is less pressure on couples nowadays to have children, and couples can choose more freely to stay childless. Nevertheless, most couples do have children, and the common-sense definition of what constitutes a ‘family’ still revolves around the presence of children.¹

The context

Tracing family change is not an easy task, because family relations are constantly transforming. For example, the very idea of ‘family time’ only fully crystallized during the course of the 20th century.² In order for such an idea to emerge, the relationships involved in what we commonly think of as the nuclear family had to first become increasingly privatized. Through the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the family often served as the active unit of production. The separation between workplace and ‘home’ was much less concretely delineated, and children were considered as a source of labour, often working long hours in dangerous factories and mines. In a striking contrast, parenting is nowadays commonly regarded as a process of long-term ‘investment’, with parents focusing on giving greater attention to fewer children.³ It took a long and slow transformation for ‘family time’ to emerge as a social category, and many factors contributed to its emergence. For example, work had to become physically separated from home, and work time separated from personal and free time in order for the nuclear family to become demarcated as a distinct entity within its own private space.

It is of course impossible to define precisely when a social category starts to exist, but it is generally considered that the 1950s was the ‘golden age’ of the idea of family time. The idea of family time is still a very important one in contemporary Britain. However, the meaning has certainly changed between the 1950s and today. For instance, attitudes towards gender have changed dramatically. In the 21st century, the great majority of people now have a ‘progressive’ attitude towards what makes a ‘good’ relationship, involving attributes such as equality between the partners, mutual respect and shared satisfaction. The ideology of marriage is no longer grounded to the same extent in religious beliefs, and is based more upon ideas about mutual affection and personal development.⁴ So, family time is still highly valued by families, but for rather different reasons. In this chapter, the focus is on the practices of family time from the turn of the 21st century, addressing two central questions: 1) How much time are families spending together? 2) What are families doing together today compared to 15 years ago?

Family time from a time-use perspective

Measuring family interactions within a quantitative framework is not easy. Time-use diaries provide three relevant types of information for each time slot: what activity was being done during that time, where it took place and with whom. The with whom information (the so-called ‘co-presence’ information) enables researchers to estimate family time. However, the reports of time use contained in time-use diaries are conditioned on individuals’ own perception and interpretation of particular situations. These differences in perception are clearly noticeable when comparing the diaries of different family members. One partner may think that he/she is sharing an activity with the other, while the other partner might consider that they are doing separate activities. In this sense, family time is not an ‘objective’ category but rather a subjective interpretation of time spent together. Think about a situation where you were sitting with your partner and both of you were using your mobile phones to communicate with someone else. Would you report this as being alone, or being with your partner?

To deal with this complexity two different types of ‘family time’ are estimated. The first measure only considers family time when both partners report being with each other and with the children (when they both ‘agree’ that they are together). The second estimate is more flexible and counts family time when at least one partner reports being with the partner and the children. One might think of the first estimate as ‘mutually engaged’ family time, when both partners actively agree on the interpretation of the situation. The second estimate can be interpreted as a more ‘passive’ kind of togetherness, when partners are present physically but not fully engaged with each other. The combination of the two can be thought of as ‘total’ family time. Time together in families is therefore divided in four main categories. The first category is ‘family time’. It includes the presence of the partner and children, and is divided into engaged and passive family time, depending on the agreement of the partners’ diaries. The second is ‘time (alone) with the partner’ or ‘exclusive partner time’ (referred to as partner exclusive in the figures below). The final two categories are ‘mother (alone) with the children’ and ‘father (alone) with the children’. All childcare activities are counted as time with children, and time spent sleeping and in employment are excluded from these measures.⁵

Figure 7.1 Changes in average minutes per day with family members, UK (2000–2015)

Engaged family time (2000)

Engaged family time (2015)

Passive family time

The general decline in engaged family time (parents and children together)

Figure 7.1 shows the four categories of family time described above, with weekdays and weekends distinguished, for 2000 and 2015. The two measures of family time are presented as filled bars representing ‘engaged family time’, with unfilled bars stacked on top representing ‘passive family time’. We see that engaged family time declined by about 30 minutes during weekdays and about 10 minutes during the weekend over the period 2000–2015. However, total family time did not show a decline.⁶ Mother’s time with children also declined, both during weekdays and during the weekend. This is surprising given the general context of documented increases in childcare over recent decades, and we discuss below how this finding might be interpreted. On the other hand, fathers increased their time (alone) with children, but only during the weekend. Finally, time (alone) with the partner (‘partner-exclusive time’), increased slightly on weekdays. (Partner-exclusive time is also distinguished into two categories in the same way: the unfilled bars represent the time only one partner reported being with the other, and the filled bars include only the time when both partners reported being together.)

Comparing weekends and weekdays, we find that all types of time together (apart from mother-and-child time) are higher during the weekend, showing the prevailing importance of weekends for family interactions.⁷ Despite the fact that most women nowadays are also employed⁸ there are still strong gender inequalities. We see that mothers are still the main provider of care in terms of time spent together with their children. During weekdays, mothers spend about 4 times more hours than fathers alone with the children and about twice the time (alone with children) during weekends.

Studying the sequencing of family time, rather than just aggregate average time, reveals that both family time and time alone with the partner is mostly concentrated in the evening, particularly on weekdays. However, comparing across time (not shown) also reveals that family time in 2015 appears more evenly distributed during the day and less concentrated in the evening. It seems that the decline in family time during weekdays is mainly due to a loss of time together in the evening. It is tempting to speculate that this may be due to a substitution of family TV time by individual use of electronic devices in separate rooms (particularly children’s bedrooms).

Activities done together: what kind of changes?

In order to better understand what seems to be a small decline in family time over the first 15 years of the 21st century, we investigated the activities done together in families (not shown). Strikingly, the two family-time activities that declined the most between 2000 and 2015 were ‘watching TV’ and doing ‘domestic chores’. We find that ‘watching TV’ together in families declined both during weekdays and weekends, for both men and women. This is also the case for domestic chores. On the other hand, eating meals together and doing childcare together in a family did not change much. Leisure together in families increased slightly for women at weekends, but decreased slightly on weekdays.

In the case of the time that mothers and fathers spend alone with their children, we find that the activity that most significantly increased for both was childcare, particularly at the weekend. During the weekend, childcare increased by 20 minutes for fathers and 23 minutes for mothers. During weekdays, however, fathers did not increase their childcare time significantly, and their domestic chore time recorded as being together with children stayed approximately the same. In contrast, doing domestic chores accompanied by children dramatically decreased for women. Despite this decrease, however, the overall gender gap in time spent doing domestic chores while accompanied by children remained very large. In 2015, during weekdays, women were doing about 77 minutes of domestic chores accompanied by children, while fathers were doing only 19 minutes accompanied by children.

Sunday family sociability

In the UK, Sunday has traditionally been the day on which families spend time together. To get a more precise sense of how these changes in family time and activities play out across the day, we investigated how time spent with family members during Sundays changed between 2000 and 2015. Figure 7.2 shows the sequencing of the activities of family time across Sundays in 2000 and 2015 separately for women and men.⁹ It is important to stress that this graph shows activities performed only when families are together (as defined by at least one parent).

These sequence tempograms show that family time spent together on Sundays has become more ‘spread out’ through the day, resonating with some of the findings discussed in the introductory section of this book. In 2000 it was more concentrated (it peaked) during the evening, but by 2015 family time was more evenly dispersed through the day. More family time was spent in leisure activities, particularly during the afternoon. Interestingly, though, in 2015 the three clear peaks in family time during the day, representing breakfast, lunch and dinner eaten together, were if anything more pronounced than they were in 2000. This suggests that, in a context where mealtimes in general are more spread throughout the day (as shown in Chapter 1), family meals on Sundays remain, in marked contrast, an important part of family time.

Figure 7.2
Sunday family time tempogram by gender, UK (2000–2015)

Childcare

Domestic

Eating

Leisure

Shopping

TV/Radio

Travel

Relatedly, we see a decline in TV watching as a component of family time, and in particular family TV watching during the evening. By 2015 no other alternative family activities really replaced evening family TV watching. It could be that children are either going to bed earlier, or doing separate activities in the evening (using ICT devices?), leaving parents free to spend more evening time together.

Also of interest is the gender difference in the activities that mothers and fathers were doing during their family time on Sundays. Fathers enjoyed more overall leisure and TV viewing during their family time on Sunday. In contrast, mothers did significantly more domestic chores than fathers (i.e. doing domestic chores together with children).¹⁰ This fits with a narrative found in previous research that suggests that men tend to spend more time doing enjoyable activities with their children at weekends than women do.

The Future of Family Time

In sum, family time has certainly changed over the period since the turn of the 21st century. ‘Engaged’ family time has declined between 2000 and 2015 while total family time did not change much. This suggests that the technological revolution of personal computers and devices has perhaps reconfigured our family time, but not led to an overall decline in the total time we spend with our children or partners.

In terms of activities, the overall decline in family time between 2000 and 2015 is primarily due to the fact that families spend less time doing domestic chores together, and watch less TV together. One can interpret this change as a type of trade-off from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’ time. Families might be experiencing an increasing shortage of time, so, when they do spend time together, they focus more on leisure and meals together, as opposed to TV watching or chores. The first question, then, is: is the decline in doing domestic chores while accompanied by partners or children necessarily a bad thing? Is there any value for partners, or parents and children, in cleaning the house in each other’s company, as there might be, for example, in watching TV together? The decline in domestic chores is part of a historical trend rooted in the transformation of gender relationships over the course of the last 50 years (see Chapter 5). Mothers, as well as fathers, seem to have redistributed their scarce time to childcare rather than chores. The increase in childcare is also part of a more general trend. Children have become, over the course of the last century, the centre of ever-greater attention and scrutiny. The evidence suggests (and time-use studies also seem to point in that direction) that we are still in the throes of this long historical process and that the time spent in childcare will continue to increase. Interestingly, mothers (alone) spend less time with children today than they did at the turn of the 21st century. However, the time that they do spend with their children at the later historical point is devoted more to childcare, and less to domestic chores, than previously. Similarly for fathers, with the difference that fathers have not made this trade-off with domestic chores, but rather with TV watching!

A second question is whether the decline in TV-watching as part of family time should be regarded positively. TV is often regarded as a ‘passive’ activity with little cultural benefit.¹¹ Nonetheless, one can make the case that watching TV together in families might have a range of positive outcomes for family life. First of all, watching TV at certain specific hours on a routine basis can serve as a family ritual. Rituals are important because they foster solidarity and a sense of identity for families.¹² Watching the same TV programme according to a regular schedule can contribute ultimately to a shared family culture. Moreover, we shouldn’t underestimate what is going on when watching television together. Family discussion and debate often sparkle in front of the TV.¹³ In this sense, TV is a social activity when others are present. Furthermore, watching emotionally ‘intense’ TV programmes (such as movies, or nature programmes) in the company of others touches the realm of collective emotions. An intimate bond is created when individuals share joint stimulation and excitement.¹⁴ Solidarity is fostered when individuals experience intimate emotions in a collective fashion, and TV as a medium can channel these emotions into a shared experience.

Unlike domestic chores, the decline in TV-watching is not explained by a long-term historical trend related to wider changes in gender ideologies, but rather it is the consequence of an ‘exogenous’ factor: smartphones and other related ICT devices. It was hard 20 years ago to imagine what would replace traditional TV watching in the future. Nowadays, household members don’t need to watch TV programmes at the same time. In principle, everyone can watch what he/she wants to watch when they want to watch it. In this sense, devices have fostered greater ‘individualization’ in media use. Temporalities have become more tailored to the individual, rather than the collective. Parents’ schedules are difficult to organize, and leisure time is often scarce. So devices can enable more leisure for parents because the kind of leisure that devices provide does not need to be synchronized with other family members. In the 1950s, if you wanted to play you had to organize and synchronize your schedule with a playing partner. Now, you can use your device to play with a virtual partner, who might, or might not, be a real person, possibly living in a completely different time zone and according to a different time schedule.¹⁵ The impact of such devices on children’s and adults’ time is discussed more fully in Chapters 10 and 11.

These devices can connect individuals not only beyond physical space but also beyond temporalities and synchronicities. This may be viewed as a positive outcome. But then, as we indicated at the start of this chapter, the question becomes: ‘What happens to sociability with the people we physically live with?’ This can mean our family members, or our friends and neighbours. Some authors make the argument that TV has had a negative impact on our relationship with the community.¹⁶ We showed that the decline of TV watching is an important factor in the reduction in family interaction. In this sense, more TV time together can foster more family time. While the results suggest that the ‘device revolution’ has had little impact on overall leisure time together and family meals, the ‘device revolution’ has impacted family TV watching, particularly in the evening Moreover, the time lost by TV watching together hasn’t been replaced by another social activity. It has just been lost in terms of family time. So, what families now have to figure out is how to (re)connect the ‘global’, to which they can now be constantly connected, with their ‘local’ physical family interactions.