Inequality in access to ”well-child” check-ups, exercise and healthy eating are related to parents’ education and are widest in early years, when it matters most for child health.

Preschool children in the US on average receive about 1,000 more hours of vital care if their parents have a college education. This inequality occurs during the first four years of their lives – the most critical period for children’s development, when parents can have a huge impact.

This finding, from a recent US study of parenting by Evrim Altintas, highlights rising inequality since the 1990s in the amount of time parents spend on developmentally important childcare activities. In particular, college-educated mothers and fathers spend more time with their children on such vital activities.

Similarly, recent research by Kate Prickett and Jennifer Augustine shows that young US children with college-educated mothers are more likely than those with less-educated mothers to attend ”well-child” check-ups, eat well, use a car seat and exercise. They are also less likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke, and they typically watch less television.

“Differences in parental education have had, over the last 20 years, an increasing impact on child development, in particular in the vital early years. This is contributing to an intergenerational transmission of parental advantages and disadvantages.”

Parental education leads to inequality in “well-child” health checks

This education-driven disparity in parenting is generally greatest in early childhood, when children’s health needs are most complex and can have the greatest long-term impact. For example, disparities in “well-child” checkups were most pronounced in infancy, when it is important to identify hearing difficulties and when most immunizations are given. Likewise, disparities by parents’ education in children’s physical activity were greatest when children were five years old; children this age start becoming more sedentary at school, and their level of physical activity is strongly correlated with whether they later develop childhood obesity.

The Altintas study examined time US parents spent in activities vital for child development between 1965 and 2013. Such activities include reading to children, helping with homework, attending children’s events and being involved in activities related to children’s education. These are vital for children’s thinking capacities and language development as well as for their emotional well-being. In the 1970s, there was no significant difference in the time high- and low-educated parents’ spent on this kind of childcare. But a gap emerged in the early 1990s, peaked in the early 2000s and remains wide.

Gap is true for fathers and mothers

Moreover, education influences both mothers’ and fathers’ involvement in developmental activities. In a separate study, Altintas found that highly educated fathers spend more time on developmental childcare than their less-educated peers, even after controlling for their spouses’ education. Similarly, Prickett’s study found that fathers’ education was associated with a higher likelihood that children were, for example, eating better and watching less television, regardless of the mothers’ education level. It is well-documented that highly educated men and women are more likely to marry one another now than in the past. This situation likely compounds the socioeconomic inequalities in children’s health and wellbeing because resources are even more concentrated among higher-educated parents.

The good news is that all parents are investing more time in their children. The problem lies in the growing gap between different categories of parents and, in particular, between the better and less educated. Many factors come into play. Educated parents typically are better off, so they can outsource activities such as cleaning and focus their time on activities that are more crucial to child development. Educated parents can also often offer more to children in some one-to-one activities. For example, a college-educated mother may be able to help more with homework or university applications than a mother without those school experiences.

Another issue is whether children live with their fathers. Because of higher rates of marriage and fewer breakups among people with more education, well-educated fathers are more likely to live with their children. Unsurprisingly, fathers who live with their children have more time to spend with them. They work together with mothers to make sure their families can follow through on healthy behaviors, such as getting to medical visits, giving their children a developmental advantage.

Policy options to reduce inequality

What can be done to improve the prospects of children with less-educated parents? The evidence suggests that we need to invest more in education generally, so that the benefits can cascade to children via better-educated parents, particularly in the early years. Alternatively, more programs should be targeted educating parents about the needs of young children, both developmentally and for good health. Such education should begin before birth because what happens during pregnancy is vital to children’s long-term prospects. Policies should focus on parents and would-be parents to make sure that they understand the effects of certain parenting practices.

Programs could also enlist skilled professionals to work with children in the early years to help fill the parental gaps. Despite the fact that parents, regardless of education level, spend more time in developmentally crucial activities with their children than ever, our studies show that the education gap in parenting is larger than ever. And the gaps in parenting behaviors that affect children’s health are greatest at times when it matters most for children’s health. Support for parents, therefore, should target low-income, less -educated parents.

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Study challenges biases against same-sex marriage and parents and highlights less time devoted by heterosexual dads.

Female same-sex parents spend 40 percent more time engaged in child-focused activities than do different-sex parents. This finding challenges biases against same-sex parents and demonstrates high levels of investment in children by same-sex couples.

The extra time comes largely because, in female same-sex unions, both mothers typically offer as much child-focused activity as do mothers in different-sex partnerships. Fathers with female partners spend only about half as much time on child-focused activity.

“Our findings support the argument that parental investment in children is at least as great – and possibly greater – in same-sex couples as for different-sex couples.”

These findings come from our study of how U.S. parents spend their time. Women in female same-sex relationships and women in different-sex relationships each spent around 100 minutes per day engaged in child-focused activities, compared to an average of 50 minutes per day among men who were married to, or cohabiting with, women. Intriguingly, fathers in same-sex relationships spent roughly the same time as the mothers (around 100 minutes). So they doubled the time typically provided by dads who were co-parenting with moms. However, these findings should be treated with caution because the study included only 17 fathers with same-sex partners.

By child-focused activities, we mean time spent engaged with children in activities that support their physical and cognitive development, such as reading to them, playing with them, helping with homework, bathing them, and taking them to the doctor. It also includes time parents spent in teacher-parent meetings and taking children to extracurricular activities. It did not include activities such as watching television with children or doing housework while a child was around.

Time spent in child-focused activities, as well as the frequency of certain family events or activities, such as eating meals together or reading books, is associated with better child outcomes, as opposed to time when the parents are around but their energy is focused on other things. This is one reason we measured child-focused, engaged parenting time, instead of just any time spent with children.

Our findings show that parental investment in children is at least as high – and possibly higher – among same-sex couples as among different-sex couples. Our study suggests that, on measures of child-focused time, children with two parents of the same sex families actually seem to receive more time investment. They received more focused time from their parents – 3.5 hours a day, compared with 2.5 hours by children with two different-sex parents.

We were surprised to find that women in same-sex couples spend as much time with children as do women with different-sex partners. We expected that women with male partners might be compensating for the lesser amounts of time that fathers provide.

Importantly, our results were derived from nationally representative data. This addressed concerns about prior studies on parenting in same-sex families, which have often relied on non-random sampling that could potentially bias the results. Our study used the American Time Use Surveys, a nationally representative time-diary survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, pooling 11 years of data from 2003 through 2013, with a sample of over 40,000 parents, which included 55 parents in same-sex relationships.

These figures explain why our findings should be interpreted with caution. We did find statistically significant differences for parents in same-sex relationships compared with those in different-sex relationships. Furthermore, these differences persisted even when we controlled for a wide range of factors such as age and number of children, hours of work and parental education, all of which influence time spent with children. Nevertheless, the sample of same sex couples was small.

Our study was unable to explain exactly why parents in same-sex relationships devote twice as much focused time to their children as do fathers with female partners, but prior sociological research can provide hints.

First, it’s possible that selection plays a large part. That is, the ways that same-sex families come about, such as partnering with someone who already has a child, going through insemination or surrogacy, or going through the lengthy process of adoption, suggest a strong desire to be a parent.

Second, parenting remains a gendered process. Fathers coupled with women still tend to be the main breadwinners, and their partners, even when they have paid employment, take on more domestic responsibility. This explanation is supported by our finding that fathers in same-sex couples – albeit a very small sample – devoted about the same amount of time to their children as did same-sex mothers. That’s double the amount provided by heterosexual dads.

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