Parents’ Well Being and Child Care Time: The Case of Italy

Time spent with children as well as the variety of activities performed has increased over the last decades. The spread of “intensive-parenting” social norms in recent years has been associated with positive effects of the wellbeing and healthy development of children. However, the effects of childcare giving on the wellbeing of parents are less clear. While a substantial body of literature has shown lower levels of subjective well-being among parents compared to childless people, only a limited number of studies based on the US have analysed the relation between childcare time and parents’ wellbeing. In this study, we use micro data from the latest edition of the Italian Time Use Survey (2013-2014) to explore the relation between the use of time of parents for children and their subjective wellbeing, after having controlled for a number of individual and household characteristics. We take advantage of the detailed survey’s information to distinguish between the different activities performed with children. Finally, we analyse different measures of parental satisfaction with childcare time, including survey’s direct questions as well as information on momentary assessments of childcare activities based on time diary episode scores.