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Educational differences in fathers’ time with children in two parent families:

Time diary evidence from the United States

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DOI: 10.1080/19424620.2015.1082340

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Educational differences in fathers’ time with

children in two parent families: Time diary
evidence from the United States

Evrim Altintas

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 Family Science, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19424620.2015.1082340

Educational differences in fathers’ time with children in two parent families: Time diary
evidence from the United States
Evrim Altintas*
Centre for Time Use Research, Department of Sociology, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
(Received 1 May 2014; accepted 26 January 2015)

This paper examines educational differences in fathers’ time spent in primary and secondary childcare activities using the
American Time Use Survey (2003–2013). Compared to fathers with lower educational attainment, well-educated fathers
spend more engaged time with their children, where a child is the main center of attention. Although highly educated
fathers are not more accessible to their children than fathers with less education, they spend more time in developmental
childcare activities associated with positive outcomes for children. The effect of fathers’ education on time spent in routine
childcare is completely explained by spouse’s education, whereas father’s time in managerial or developmental childcare
activities is hardly affected. Overall, the results indicate distinct fathering practices by educational attainment, some of
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which are explained by spouse’s education.

Keywords: childcare; fathers; time use; US; class; education

Introduction However, studies that investigate the effect of education

Fathers influence their children’s development in several
ways. The early literature largely concentrates on the
importance of fathers’ role as a provider or sex-role
model (Lamb, 2010). Starting from the 1980s, however,
two lines of research, one on the effect of ‘father absence’
and the other on ‘involved fathers,’ yielded consistent
findings, some of which defied the earlier conclusions
(Lamb, 2010; Lamb & Lewis, 2010). Although the role
of financial support remained salient, neither fathers’ mas-
culinity nor their sexual orientation seemed relevant for
children’s psychological well-being or gender identity
(Golombok & Tasker, 2010; Patterson, 2004). Now, a
large body of literature consistently shows that fathers
influence their children directly ‘through their behavior
and the attitudes and the messages they convey’ and
indirectly ‘through the emotional and instrumental support
to the other people’ in the children’s life (Lamb, 2010, pp.
8–9). Fathers’ daily activities and behavioral patterns
stand out as major factors affecting children’s psychologi-
cal well-being and cognitive development (Amato &
Gilbert, 1999; Lamb & Lewis, 2010; Lamb & Tamis-
LeMonda, 2004). Given the importance of daily father–
child interaction in children’s future life outcomes, it is
essential to identify the factors affecting fathers’ time
spent with their children and the type of activities they
engage in.
Fathers’ education is one of those factors. Time use
literature consistently shows the positive effect of
fathers’ education on time spent in primary childcare
activities (Monna & Gauthier, 2008 for a review).
on paternal involvement in specific childcare activities
are scarce and have mixed findings (Aldous, Mulligan,
& Bjarnason, 1998; Hook & Wolfe, 2011; Yeung,
Sandberg, Davis-Kean, & Hofferth, 2001). This is a
serious limitation because ‘fatherhood is a multifaceted
concept’ (Lamb, 2000, p. 24), and an accurate measure-
ment of daily fathering practices must reflect this multi-
dimensionality. Furthermore, a substantial amount of
childcare is done in the form of secondary childcare,
where the father is not necessarily engaged one-to-one
with the child but is accessible by the virtue of having
the child in his care during this period (Lamb, Pleck,
Charnov, & Levine, 1985; Zick & Bryant, 1996).
In this paper, we address these limitations in the lit-
erature by considering a broad set of childcare activities
fathers engage in. We borrow Lamb et al.’s (1985) con-
ceptualization of father involvement and exploit a decade-
long time use survey from the United States. We look at
the effect of educational differences in fathers’ time spent
in various forms of childcare. In the light of recent find-
ings (England & Srivastava, 2013), we also investigate the
extent to which the effect of fathers’ educational attain-
ment reflects the effect of spouse’s education.
Previous research
Past research consistently shows that well-educated par-
ents spend more time in primary childcare than parents
with lower educational attainment (Bianchi, Robinson, &
Milkie, 2006; Guryan, Hurst, & Kearney, 2008; Sullivan,

*Email: evrim.altintas@sociology.ox.ac.uk

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 2 E. Altintas
2010). Not only the total amount of time, but also the
types of activities parents engage in vary by parental
education (Bianchi et al., 2006; Zick, Bryant, &
Österbacka, 2001). Well-educated mothers provide more
‘enriching’ care activities than their less-educated counter-
parts (Leibowitz, 1977), and they tend to gear their child-
care activities according to the developmental needs of
their children (Kalil, Ryan, & Corey, 2012).
The research on educational differences in fathers’
involvement in specific care activities is more limited
with mixed findings. An analysis of National Survey of
Families and Households (NSFH, 1987–1988 and 1992–
1993) data shows a negative association of white fathers’
education with time spent in physical care when the child
is under the age of 5 (Aldous et al., 1998). The same study
shows a positive association between paternal education
and talking to a child when the child is of school age (5–
9). An analysis of the first wave of the NSFH data also
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points to a positive association between fathers’ education
and parent–child interaction in the form of playing with
the child, taking the child on outings, and reading to the
child (Cooney, Pedersen, Indelicato, & Palkovitz, 1993).
Also using the NSFH, Zick et al. (2001) find a positive
association between fathers’ education and frequency of
reading to/helping the child and playing with the child. A
major limitation of these three papers is their reliance on
stylized questions (i.e. ‘Last week, how many hours did
you spend on X?’), which are sensitive to social desir-
ability bias (Hofferth, 2006).
Alternative empirical evidence with respect to fathers’
time with children comes from the analysis of Child
Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics (1997) (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001; Yeung
et al., 2001). The investigation of children’s diaries
shows that total time in activities, where children are
directly engaged with or have their father accessible, is
positively associated with fathers’ education on weekdays,
but not on weekends (Yeung et al., 2001). The same study
finds that fathers with secondary education spend more
time on achievement or social activities with their children
on weekdays, but no education gradient was found with
respect to specific activities on weekends. Hofferth and
Sandberg’s (2001) analysis of the same data shows a
positive association of household head’s years of com-
pleted schooling and children’s time spent in housework,
reading, and studying, but in this sample, 21% of the cases
had a female head of household. Although seeing how
children spend their time provides an insight into parent-
ing practices, children’s diaries provide limited evidence
on parents’ childcare patterns. Two recent studies focus on
fathers’ time spent in specific care activities using
American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Hook and Wolfe
(2011) find a positive effect of having a college degree
on physical care on weekdays and interactive care on
weekends. Finally, England and Srivastava (2013)
challenged the previous findings of a positive effect of
fathers’ educational attainment on their care time, arguing
that fathers’ care time is largely influenced by their wife’s
education.
Explaining the effect of education on fathers’ childcare
Lareau (2011 [2003]) provides one of the most compre-
hensive theoretical explanations of class differences in
child rearing practices in the US context. According to
the author, middle-class parents embrace a culture of con-
certed cultivation, whereas working-class parents facilitate
the accomplishment of natural growth. Concerted cultiva-
tion refers to the set of child-rearing practices through
which middle class parents deliberately try to augment
their children’s cultural capital. In other words, middle-
class parents actively engage in activities that improve
their children’s cognitive and social skills, which can
lead to further success in various social settings, particu-
larly in school and labor market. The practice of natural
growth does not entail active promotion of children’s
cultural capital or a very close monitoring of everyday
school experiences; instead, it grants more autonomy to
children in everyday life and keeps them free from con-
stant parental scrutiny. In Lareau’s work, the theorization
of class differences in parenting behavior is gender-neu-
tral; the effect of class on parenting behavior is assumed to
be similar for both fathers and mothers. From this theore-
tical perspective, the educational differences in daily activ-
ity patterns of fathers reflect class differences in child-
rearing practices, namely concerted cultivation and nat-
ural growth.
From another perspective, fathers’ involvement in
family life and contribution to childcare is a reflection of
their gender ideologies rather than their specific child-rear-
ing culture oriented toward developing their children’s cog-
nitive skills (Bulanda, 2004; Coltrane, 1996; Cunningham,
2001). Fathers with a more gender-egalitarian attitude are
expected to spend more time in childcare than traditional
fathers. Although the large amount of empirical evidence
that supports this perspective comes from research on
fathers’ involvement in housework rather than childcare
(for a review, see Lachance-Grzela & Bouchard, 2010), a
few studies specifically report a positive effect of fathers’
egalitarian gender ideology on their involvement in child-
care activities (Aldous et al., 1998; Bulanda, 2004; Hofferth,
2003). Because education is positively correlated with gen-
der-egalitarian attitudes (Thornton, Alwin, & Camburn,
1983), fathers with higher educational attainment are
expected to contribute more to childcare.
Alternatively, the positive effect of fathers’ educa-
tion on time spent in primary childcare is attributed to
the higher amount of resources at the disposal of these
fathers (Cabrera, Hofferth, & Chae, 2011). These
resources could be in the form of (i) money, allowing

fathers to have leisurely activities outside the home
with children, such as going to a movie; (ii) time,
being able to outsource housework activities to make
up time for children (England & Srivastava, 2013);
(iii) psychological well-being, as parents with higher
educational attainment are less likely to have stress due
to financial/employment instability, which would nega-
tively affect parental involvement (Conger, Conger, &
Martin, 2010; Conger & Donnellan, 2007); or (iv)
skills, enabling them to be more effective and confi-
dent in parenting (Lamb et al., 1985). From this per-
spective, all fathers are willing to spend more time
with children, but those with lower educational attain-
ment have fewer resources and more constraints
(Cabrera et al., 2011; England & Srivastava, 2013).
Theoretical expectations
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These three alternative explanations are not completely
mutually exclusive in the sense that they all predict positive
association with paternal education and fathers’ time in
childcare, particularly in developmentally salient care activ-
ities. However, according to the resources or Lareau’s child-
rearing norms perspective, fathers with high educational
attainment do not necessarily spend more time doing routine
care activities, because these types of activities do not have a
direct impact on children’s cultural capital accumulation or
cognitive skill development. From the perspective of gender
ideologies, compared to fathers with low-educational attain-
ment highly educated fathers are expected to contribute
more to routine childcare activities.
We also predict well-educated fathers to be more
involved in activities related to planning and organizing
children’s lives than their less-educated counterparts, due
to their gender egalitarian attitudes and interest in mon-
itoring their children’s academic and social lives. In the
same vein, fathers with higher educational attainment are
also expected to be more accessible to their children.
We expect spouse’s education to be positively correlated
with fathers’ time spent in all forms of childcare activities for
the following reasons: Mothers with higher educational
attainment are more likely to follow child-rearing practices
in line with concerted cultivation (Lareau, 2011 [2003]).
They are expected to influence their spouses’ fathering prac-
tices and motivate them to increase their involvement in
children’s lives (England & Srivastava, 2013). Furthermore,
having strong gender-egalitarian attitudes and more
resources at their disposal, mothers with high educational
attainment are in a better situation to negotiate an equal
contribution to all forms of childcare from their partners.
Data, sample, and methods
The data used in this paper come from the 2003–2013
ATUS. ATUS uses time diary methodology, which
Family Science 3
provides the most reliable and accurate information on
daily time use patterns. The diary method is less prone
to recall error or social desirability response bias than
stylized questions (Bianchi et al., 2006; Robinson &
Godbey, 1999). This is especially important for the
present research, given that childcare activities, particu-
larly developmental care activities, tend to be overre-
ported in stylized questions due to social desirability
bias (Hofferth, 2006).
The sample is restricted to 16,128 married/cohabiting
fathers aged between 18 and 54 and living with at least
one child under the age of 13. ‘Own’ child refers to
biological, step, or adopted child. A small number of
households where there is a non-own household child
under the age of 18 are excluded from the sample for
two reasons. First, in those households, it is not possible
to disentangle the secondary childcare provided for a
parent’s own children from non-own children in the
2003 data. Because the focus of this study is on paternal
time only, failure to disentangle the care provided for own
and non-own children would be problematic. Second,
families with non-own residential children are considered
as a different (sub) demographic group with their own
mechanisms of time allocation among household
members.
We operationalize fathers’ involvement in children
through their direct and indirect care activities.
Primary childcare refers to the total minutes spent in
all forms of childcare activities, reported as the main
activity at a specified time on a given diary day. We
decompose primary childcare into three sub-activity
categories. The activities that constitute the essential
parental responsibility and address the basic needs of
their children, such as shelter, food, and clothing, are
coded as basic childcare. The primary care activities
that are that specifically geared toward augmenting
children’s linguistic, social, or cognitive skills are
referred to as developmental childcare activities.
Finally, the remaining care activities, which are related
to organizing and managing a child’s daily life, such as
planning for children or picking up/dropping of chil-
dren, are grouped under managerial childcare.
This classification is theory-driven and largely in line
with previous work (Guryan et al., 2008; Kalilet al., 2012;
Lamb et al., 1985). The detailed decomposition of primary
care activities is presented in Table A1 in the Appendix.
Primary childcare activity in the form of providing basic
and developmental childcare can be thought of as a proxy
for parental involvement in the form of engagement;
whereas time spent in managerial/organizational is a,
albeit imperfect, proxy for Lamb et al.’s responsibility/
managerial function of parenting (Lamb et al., 1985;
Parke, 2000).
Secondary childcare refers to the total amount of time
that a child is under paternal care while the father is
 4 E. Altintas

simultaneously involved in another activity. Having a
child in care during a specific care activity is used as a
proxy for paternal accessibility to the child (Lamb et al.,
1985). In this type of activity, the father is not directly
involved with a child but is undoubtedly accessible,
because he indicates the episode as one in which the
child is in his care. In rare cases where both primary and
secondary childcare activities are reported simultaneously,
time is attributed only to primary care. In brief, the total
time spent in secondary childcare is interpreted as fathers’
accessibility to a child at times when he was not primarily
engaged with the child.
The main explanatory variable is educational
attainment of the father, a five-category ordinal vari-
able. The first category is the lowest educational attain-
ment level, less than high school degree. This is the
reference category in all of the analysis, though we
refer to the differences between other categories as
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earner, female breadwinner, no earner), and diary com-
pletion day and year.
A series of linear regressions (OLS) are performed to
test whether education is positively associated with more
time in childcare activities. In these models, the dependent
variable is minutes spent in the activity. The propensity of
providing childcare is also an important dimension of
parental involvement. Therefore, the logistic regression
model is also used to predict fathers’ probability of pro-
viding some time in the specified activities. In these mod-
els, the dependent variable is a binary variable, taking on
the value of 1 if the respondent reported any time in the
activity.
Descriptive results
Table 1 shows fathers’ time in minutes in total primary

well. The second category, high school degree, is fol-
lowed by some college education, which refers to some
college education without the degree, regardless of the
attended period. Completed occupational/vocational
degrees, as well as academic programs following gra-
duation from high school, are encompassed in this
category. The next category, bachelor’s degree, com-
prises all 4-year college degrees. Finally, all degrees
above graduate levels (master’s degrees, professional
degrees, etc.) are coded as postcollege degree. The
spouse’s educational attainment is measured in the
same way.
The control variables in the model are theory-driven
by and in-line with previous research on time spent with
children. They are age of diarist, age of youngest child
(0–2, 3–5, and 6–12), number of own children aged
between 0 and 12, presence of male child, race/ethnicity
household employment structure (male breadwinner, dual
and secondary care activities by educational attainment.
The first column in each panel shows the average time
spent in the activity by all fathers in the relevant education
category. The second shows the percentage of fathers who
reported at least 1 minute in the activity on a given diary
day (participants). Finally, average time spent in childcare
by participating fathers (parents who reported at least
1 minute in the activity) is presented in the third column
in each panel.
As expected, the average time spent in primary child-
care was significantly higher for fathers with higher edu-
cational attainment than those who were less educated. For
example, fathers with at least a 4-year college degree spent
almost half an hour more in primary childcare than those
with no high school degree. There was, however, no such
difference in total time spent in secondary childcare. The
results also indicate that the main source of variation in
average time in primary childcare came from the

Table 1. Fathers’ time (minutes) in primary and secondary childcare.

Primary childcare Secondary childcare

Mean (all) % Reported the activity Mean (>0) Mean (all) % Reported the activity Mean (>0)

Less than high school 49bcde 45bcde 108 289 76bcde 380bcde
High school degree 58acde 57acde 101 301 84ade 362ade
Some college 66abde 64abde 102 300 86ae 348ade
Bachelor’s degree 78abc 74abc 105 290 88ab 332abc
Postcollege degree 79abc 76abc 103 290 88abc 328abc
All fathers 67 65 103 295 85 345
Sample size 16,128 16,128 10,277 16,128 16,128 14,008

Notes: Weights are applied to represent the population distribution accurately and to correct for distribution of the days of the week. T-test (or chi-squared
test) results indicate that the figure is:
a
Significantly different from less than high school (p < 0.05).
b
Significantly different from high school degree (p < 0.05).
c
Significantly different from some college education (p < 0.05).
d
Significantly different from bachelor’s degree (p < 0.05).
e
Significantly different from postcollege degree (p < 0.05).
 Family Science 5

Table 2. Fathers’ time spent (minutes) in specific primary childcare activities.

Mean (all) % Reported the activity Mean (>0) Proportion to total primary care

Routine childcare
Less than high school 20cde 23bcde 87bcde 0.38bcde
High school degree 24cde 38acde 63ade 0.44ad
Some college 27abde 46abde 60a 0.46a
Bachelor’s degree 33abc 57abc 58ab 0.46ab
Postcollege degree 32abc 57abc 56ab 0.46a
All fathers 28 46 60 0.45
Sample size 16,128 16,128 7329 7329
Developmental childcare
Less than high school 25cde 24bcde 102de 0.44bcde
High school degree 28de 30acde 93de 0.39a
Some college 31ade 35abde 89ae 0.38a
Bachelor’s degree 37abc 43abce 86ab 0.38a
Postcollege degree 39ab 47abcd 82abc 0.40a
All fathers 33 37 89 0.39
Sample size 16,128 16,128 5758 5758
Managerial/organizational childcare
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Less than high school 3.2bcde 16bcde 19cde 0.18e

High school degree 5.4acde 21acde 26abde 0.18de
Some college 7.1abd 23abde 30a 0.16e
Bachelor’s degree 8.4abc 27abc 31ab 0.16be
Postcollege degree 8.1ab 28abc 29ab 0.15abc
All fathers 6.8 24 29 0.16
Sample size 16,128 16,128 3380 3380
Note: See notes of Table 1.

differences in fathers’ participation rate rather than minutes
spent in the activity by participants. We also did not observe
a large difference in the percentage of fathers who spent
some time in secondary childcare, especially among those
with at least a high school degree. Furthermore, among the
fathers who reported some time in secondary childcare,
those with lower educational attainment actually reported
significantly more time in the activity than those who were
highly educated. Table 2 shows the descriptive analysis for
specific types of primary childcare.
The first three columns of each panel of Table 2 give
the same type of information as in Table 1. The additional
fourth column shows the proportion each activity repre-
sents of the total time spent in primary or developmental
care, respectively. For example, the fourth column for
fathers with a bachelor’s degree in Table 2 shows that
time allocated to developmental childcare activities
makes up 46% of the total time spent in primary childcare.
On average, compared to fathers with lower educa-
tional attainment, those with higher education spent more
time in all three childcare activities. Furthermore, in all
three cases, the difference in average time spent in child-
care was largely due to the variation in participation rate,
rather than minutes spent in the activity by participant
fathers. For example, the percentage of fathers who
reported some time in developmental care activities
increases from 24% to 47% as we move from the lowest
educational attainment category to the highest. Yet, the
minutes spent in developmental care were actually less for
those with higher educational attainment for engaged in
such care (column 3).
Regression results
Table 3 shows the linear regression results estimating
fathers’ time spent in primary and secondary childcare
activities. The control variables are not shown (available
upon request). The second model for each dependent
variable also controls for spouses’ education.
In line with previous research, our findings show that
well-educated fathers spent more time in primary childcare
than those with lower educational attainment. The differ-
ence between fathers with a high school degree and those
with at least a college education is about 23–25 minutes
per day. Spouse’s education explains some, but not all, of
the effect of fathers’ education. Fathers who were married
to spouses with at least a 4-year college degree spent
significantly more time in primary care activities. There
were, however, no significant educational differences in
father’s provision of secondary childcare.
Figure 1 shows the predicted probability based on
logistic regression models. Fathers were likely to provide
secondary childcare at all educational levels. In contrast,
educational attainment had a strong positive association
with providing primary childcare. The predicted probabil-
ity of providing primary care increases from 48% for
 6 E. Altintas

Table 3. OLS results estimating time (minutes) in primary and

secondary care activities.

Secondary
Primary childcare childcare

b (SE) b (SE) b (SE) b (SE)

Father
Ref: Less than high school
High school degree 5.0 4.7 10.0 1.1
(3.0) (3.3) (7.5) (8.3)
Some college 12.1*** 9.1** 13.5 6.7
(3.1) (3.5) (7.6) (8.7)
Bachelor’s degree 23.1*** 14.9*** 7.2 6.0
(3.1) (3.7) (7.8) (9.2)
Postcollege degree 25*** 13.0** 11.6 11.8
(3.4) (4.0) (8.5) (10.0)
Spouse
Ref: Less than high school
Figure 1. Predicted probability of providing primary and sec-
High school degree −2.7 24.3**
ondary childcare.
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(3.5) (8.7)
Notes: Predicted probability of reporting the activity is estimated
Some college 3.1 22.2*
based on a logistic regression model that controls for diary
(3.6) (9.0)
completion day, number of children under age 13, age of young-
Bachelor’s degree 11.5** 6.0
est child, presence of a male child, household employment
(3.8) (9.4)
structure, diary completion year and day (weekday or weekend).
Postcollege degree 21.6*** 8.7
Typical values are medians for quantitative variables and sample
(4.2) (10.4)
proportions of categories for categorical variables. A binary
Adjusted R2 0.10 0.10 0.24 0.24 variable for diary completion day is set to 0.71 (5/7).
Sample size 16,128 16,128 16,128 16,128

Notes: All models control for diary completion day, number of children
under age 13, age of youngest child, presence of a male child, race/
ethnicity, household employment structure, diary completion year and
day (weekday or weekend). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
fathers with no high school degree to 77% for those with a
postcollege degree.
Table 4 shows the linear regression result estimates for
whether the effect of education is consistently positive for
different types of care activities.
Fathers who have a college degree spent significantly
more time in all types of childcare compared to fathers
with a high school degree or less. More specifically,
fathers with at least a college degree provided approxi-
mately 16 minutes more in routine and developmental care
for their children than those with a high school degree
(8 minutes each). Fathers with a college degree also pro-
vided 3–4 minutes more managerial care per day than
those with a high school degree or less. This figure does
not seem very large on its own but given that the average
time spent in out-of-home childcare was 7 minutes per
day, as opposed to approximately half an hour in inter-
active and basic childcare (Table 2), an extra 3–4 minutes
of out-of-home care per day is a relatively large difference.
The second, fourth, and sixth columns present the
effect of spouse’s educational attainment on specific care
activities. The effect of the father’s education on time
spent in routine activities was completely explained by
his spouse’s education, whereas father’s time in
developmental childcare and managerial care was hardly
affected. So, the ‘cross-spouse’ effect does not operate in
the same manner for all types of childcare activities.
Figure 2 shows the predicted probability of providing
specific care activities by educational attainment based on
logistic regression results. When calculating the predicted
probability of father’s involvement in specific care activ-
ities, we set the age of child so that education gradient
would be highest in that activity for children in that age
group (Kalil et al., 2012). Fathers’ probability of providing
all three specific care activities increased by education, but
the sharpest gradient was observed in routine care. It is
also striking that even for the fathers with the highest
educational attainment, the predicted probability of pro-
viding routine care for an infant was only 75%. The
corresponding figure for mothers was 93% (not shown
on the plot). Even the most involved fathers were not
anywhere close to being the main caregivers for young
children.
Summary and discussion
This paper documented variations in daily childcare
activities of married/cohabiting fathers by education.
The findings are consistent with previous work in show-
ing that highly educated fathers spend more time in
primary childcare than less-educated fathers. However,
fathers who are well-educated are not necessarily more
 Family Science 7

Table 4. OLS results estimating time (minutes) in specific primary care activities.

Routine childcare Developmental childcare Managerial childcare

b (SE) b (SE) b (SE) b (SE) b (SE) b (SE)

Father
Ref: Less than high school
High school graduate 1.43 −0.79 2.08 4.43 1.51 1.07
(1.83) (2.02) (2.11) (2.32) (0.9) (0.99)
Some college 4.48* 0.19 4.48* 6.34** 3.17*** 2.55*
(1.86) (2.12) (2.14) (2.43) (0.91) (1.04)
Bachelor’s degree 8.98*** 2.09 9.60*** 9.57*** 4.49*** 3.22**
(1.92) (2.24) (2.2) (2.58) (0.94) (1.1)
Postcollege degree 9.60*** 0.73 11.48*** 10.04*** 3.93*** 2.26
(2.07) (2.44) (2.38) (2.8) (1.01) (1.20)
Spouse
Ref: Less than high school
High school degree 3.28 −6.91** 0.92
(2.12) (2.43) (1.04)
Some college 7.25*** −4.96* 0.8
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(2.19) (2.52) (1.08)

Bachelor’s degree 11.03*** −1.78 2.21
(2.3) (2.65) (1.13)
Postcollege degree 16.09*** 2.46 3.09*
(2.54) (2.91) (1.25)
Adjusted R2 0.08 0.08 0.05 0.05 0.02 0.02
Sample size 16,128 16,128 16,128 16,128 16,128 16,128

Notes: See notes of Table 3.

accessible to their children. The findings, therefore, did

Figure 2. Predicted probability of providing specific primary
childcare activities.
Notes: Predicted probability of reporting the activity is esti-
mated based on a logistic regression model that controls for
diary completion day, number of children under age 13, age
of youngest child, presence of a male child, household
employment structure, diary completion year and day (week-
day or weekend). Typical values are medians for quantitative
variables and sample proportions of categories for categorical
variables. A binary variable for diary completion day is set to
0.71 (5/7).
not support the expectation of a positive association
between fathers’ time in secondary childcare activities
and educational attainment.
In line with England and Srivastava (2013), we also
found a significant ‘cross-spouse influence’ on fathers’
primary childcare time. That is, the positive effect of
fathers’ education was partially explained by spouse’s
education. Furthermore, fathers with a spouse who has at
least a 4-year college degree spent significantly more time
in primary childcare than fathers married to a woman with
lower educational attainment. The results are, therefore, in
line with the theoretical expectation and previous research
in showing a positive influence of spouse’s education on
fathers’ involvement in primary childcare.
The decomposition of primary care activities showed
that fathers with higher educational attainment provided
more routine, developmental, and managerial care than
their less well-educated counterparts. The findings,
therefore, supported the gender ideology perspective,
rather than either the resources or child-rearing norms
perspectives, in showing a positive effect of education
on fathers’ involvement in routine care activities. Yet,
the positive effect of education on fathers’ time spent in
routine care was completely explained by spouse’s edu-
cation, whereas this was not the case for developmental
 8 E. Altintas
childcare. Furthermore, having a highly educated spouse
was not positively associated with more paternal time in
developmental childcare activities. The results therefore
indicated that pooling diverse forms of childcare
together in an analysis concealed different effects of
spouse’s education on fathers’ specific childcare activ-
ities. That is, spouse’s educational attainment did not
influence paternal time investments in different care
activities in the same way.
One possible explanation behind the differential effect
of spousal education goes as follows: Compared to their
less-educated counterparts, highly educated spouses are
more likely to have gender-egalitarian attitudes and they
are in a stronger bargaining position. These two factors,
strong bargaining power and gender-egalitarian attitude,
exert influence on fathers’ contribution to routine, less
rewarding, and traditionally feminine childcare activities,
but not necessarily to the ones that are considered as
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enjoyable and fun by fathers (Robinson & Godbey, 1999).
There is a limit to how much one can empirically
document the variations in fathering practices with the
available time use data. For a start, the data do not allow
us to measure the specific contents of activities, which
would be very informative. For instance, the data indicate
whether a father reads to or talks to and for how long, but do
not tell us what he talks or reads about. Second, the data do
not give information on secondary activities other than
secondary childcare. This is problematic particularly
because most of the communicative interactions take the
form of secondary activities (e.g. conversation during din-
ner). Also, the sample comprised residential fathers in two
parent families; hence, the results cannot be generalized to
the wider population of all fathers in the United States.
Despite the above-listed limitations, the study provides
convincing empirical evidence for significant educational
differences in fathers’ childcare activities. There is a sig-
nificant and substantial education gap in caregiving among
fathers, particularly in activities likely to improve chil-
dren’s social or cognitive skills. Our findings warrant
attention to the ‘dual-disadvantage’ of children born to
poorly educated parents. These children are disadvantaged
due to limited material resources that the household has at
its disposal (Willingham, 2012), and it is precisely these
children that also receive less maternal (Kalil et al., 2012)
and paternal time investments.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Oriel Sullivan and the reviewers
for their helpful comments on the earlier version of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by the British Academy.
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APPENDIX
Table A1. Decomposition of primary care activities

ATUS
Primary childcare activities Code

1. Routine childcare
1.1 Basic childcare
1.1.1 Physical childcare 30101
1.1.2 Looking after children 30109
1.1.3 Caring for and helping children 30199
1.2 Medical childcare
1.2.1 Providing medical care to children 30301
1.2.2 Obtaining medical care for children 30302
1.2.3 Waiting associated with children’s health 30303
1.2.4 Activities related to children’s health 30399
2. Developmental childcare
2.1 Play with child
2.1.1 Play with child-not sports 30103
2.1.2 Play sport with child 30105
2.1.3 Arts and crafts with children 30104
2.2 School related/ educational activities
2.2.1 Helping with homework 30201
2.2.2 Meetings and school conferences 30202
2.2.3 Home schooling of children 30203
2.2.4 Waiting associated with children’s education 30204
2.2.5 Activities related to child’s education 30299
2.3 Read /talk to child
2.3.1 Reading to/with children 30102
2.3.2 Talking with/listening to children 30186
3. Managerial/ Organizational childcare
3.1 Organization and planning for children 30108
3.2 Attending children’s events 30110
3.3 Waiting for/with children 30111
3.4 Picking up/dropping off children 30112

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