New research published recently by Brigham Young University economist Joseph Price, is giving credence to the idea that parent-child time is not only critical but that its benefits may actually be measurable. Using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), Price found that first-born children receive substantially more quality time each day with a parent than a second-born child receives at the same age. In other words, a six-year-old first-born child will spend more time playing, eating and reading with parents than a six-year-old child who was born into the family second. In fact, older children get an average of 2,200 hours more quality time than will their next-youngest sibling, and that does not include the two years of life (on average) that the oldest spends as an only child. Price theorizes that this extra parent-child time may be one reason older children have better “outcomes,” including better academic test scores, fewer risky behaviors, and higher incomes than their siblings.
One interesting issue pointed out by Dr. Price’s research is that the quality and amount of the time parents spend with their children actually diminishes as the parents age. Here’s one scenario that attempts to illustrate what Dr. Price is saying: At age 4, Sandra (the oldest) gets a bedtime story every night. When Jacob (the second child) turns 4, he gets a bedtime story every-other night and so does Sandra, because Dad alternates reading to each of them. By the time Melanie, the third-born turns 4, the evenings are spent watching Sandra play softball or helping Jacob with his homework. Most evenings, Melanie watches a little TV with her exhausted parents before they tuck her in bed. They always make it a point to read to her on Sundays, however. In other words, even though Mom and Dad are dividing their time equally between their three children at any given point in time, child number three gets a smaller cut of their quality time and attention over her lifetime. This, says Price, explains why we can expect Sandra (the oldest) to score better on her college entrance exams than her youngest sister, Melanie.
What this research seems to be saying is that one of the reasons older children do so well is that they spend more time with a parent. That’s a critical piece of information for parents who wand to find the most effective means of helping their children succeed. For Price, who has four children of his own, the data gave him incentive redouble his efforts spend more quality time with the youngest of his four children. For the rest of us, the research also confirms that quality time (playful time) with a parent is critical to a child’s future success.
