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Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults

By on August 2, 2024 in Articles

Patrick Sharkey

Sociological Science August 2, 2024
10.15195/v11.a20

Abstract

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The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States. Despite the links between the physical setting for individuals’ daily lives and their connections with family, friends, and the various institutions of collective life, trends in where American adults spend their time have been largely overlooked as researchers have focused on how and with whom they spend their time. This article analyzes data from the American Time Use Survey over a timeframe spanning nineteen years and argues that the changes in Americans’ daily routines induced by the COVID era should be seen as an acceleration of a longer-term trend: the rise of time spent at home. Results show that from 2003 to 2022, average time spent at home among American adults has risen by one hour and 39 minutes in a typical day. Time at home has risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities. Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning, suggesting the need for enhanced empirical attention to this major shift in the setting of American life.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Patrick Sharkey: William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
E-mail: psharkey@princeton.edu

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the March, 2024 cohort of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Program. I began thinking about and working on this article during the residency, and my colleagues there provided insightful feedback, questions, and comments on the analysis. I thank Michael Maesano for excellent research assistance.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: All data files and code for replication are available here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/R4P98D.

  • Citation: Sharkey, Patrick. 2024. “Homebound: The long-term rise in time spent at home among U.S. adults” Sociological Science 11: 553-578.
  • Received: May 15, 2024
  • Accepted: June 26, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a20


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Re-examining How Partner Co-presence and Multitasking Affect Parents’ Enjoyment of Childcare and Housework

By on July 28, 2020 in Articles

Allison Dunatchik, Svetlana Speight

Sociological Science July 28, 2020
10.15195/v7.a11

Abstract
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Partner co-presence and multitasking are two contextual characteristics of time use that are commonly theorized to affect parental well-being. Although partner co-presence is often assumed to promote greater well-being, multitasking is frequently conceptualized as an indicator of time pressure. This study re-examines the relationship between these contextual characteristics and parents’ enjoyment of childcare and housework. Using data from the U.K. Time Use Survey (2014–2015), our results indicate that associations between partner co-presence, multitasking, and enjoyment of unpaid work vary substantively depending on the type of task carried out. They also vary by gender of the parent. Mothers reported greater enjoyment of housework and interactive childcare with a partner present; however, this association did not extend to other types of childcare. Fathers’ enjoyment varied little by partner co-presence. Similarly, multitasking was a varied experience depending on the types of activities parents combined. In some instances, combining unpaid work activities (e.g., housework with childcare) was associated with lower enjoyment; however, combining unpaid work with leisure was often associated with greater enjoyment. These results add nuance to prior research on how the contextual characteristics of time use relate to parental well-being and suggest that prior conceptualizations of partner co-presence and multitasking are incomplete.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Allison Dunatchik: The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Sociology
E-mail: adunat@sas.upenn.edu

Svetlana Speight: The National Centre for Social Research
E-mail: svetlana.speight@natcen.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative ES/R004854/1. We are grateful to Professor Oriel Sullivan for her comments on previous versions of this manuscript, which have greatly improved the article. We would also like to thank Robert Wishart, who provided analytical advice and expertise. Finally, we thank members of the project Advisory Group for their input and support throughout the project.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Dunatchik, Allison, and Svetlana Speight. 2020. “Re-examining How Partner Copresence and Multitasking Affect Parents’ Enjoyment of Childcare and Housework.” Sociological Science 7: 268-290.
  • Received: March 1, 2020
  • Accepted: May 24, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a11


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Religion, Time Use, and Affective Well-Being

By on August 10, 2016 in Articles

Chaeyoon Lim

Sociological Science, August 10, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a29

Abstract
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This study examines whether religious people experience more positive affect and less negative affect in everyday life and, if they do, whether it is because of the differences in how they allocate time to different activities or because they feel differently during similar activities. Using the well-being module from the 2010–13 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), I show that churchgoers enjoy a significantly higher level of affective well-being on Sunday than non-churchgoers do. The supplementary analysis of the Gallup Daily Poll data suggests that this higher level of affective well-being among churchgoers is found throughout the rest of the week as well. Further analyses of the ATUS demonstrate that about 40 percent of the affective well-being gap between churchgoers and non-churchgoers on Sunday can be explained by how they spend their time differently. Churchgoers spend more time on Sunday participating in pleasant activities shared with family members and friends than non-churchgoers do. More than half of the gap, however, remains unexplained, implying that it has to do with how they feel during similar activities rather than the activities in which they participate. I discuss the implications of these findings on the mechanisms underlying the link between religion and subjective well-being.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Chaeyoon Lim: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Email: chaeyoon.lim@wisc.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lim, Chaeyoon. 2016. “Religion, Time Use, and Affective Well-Being.” Sociological Science 3: 685-709.
  • Received: April 6, 2016
  • Accepted: May 8, 2016
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v3.a29


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Time as a Network Good: Evidence from Unemployment and the Standard Workweek

By on February 14, 2014 in Articles

Cristobal Young, Chaeyoon Lim

Sociological Science, February 18, 2014
DOI 10.15195/v1.a2

Abstract
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We argue that time is a network good: its value depends on the number of social others who have the same schedule of time available. We demonstrate this in a comparative analysis of how the standard workweek shapes the social time and emotional well-being of workers and the unemployed. Drawing on two independent data sets, with more than half a million respondents, we show that both workers and the unemployed experience remarkably similar increases in emotional well-being on weekends and have similar declines in well-being when the workweek begins. The unemployed look forward to weekends much the same as workers. This is in large part because social time increases sharply on weekends for both workers and the unemployed. Weekend well-being is not due to time off work per se but rather is a collectively produced social good stemming from widely shared free time on weekends. The unemployed gain comparatively little benefit from their time off during the week, when others go to work.

Cristobal Young: Department of Sociology, Stanford University. E-mail: cristobal.young@stanford.edu

Chaeyoon Lim: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. E-mail: clim@ssc.wisc.edu

Supplemental Materials

  • Citation: Young, Cristobal, and Chaeyoon Lim. 2014. “Time as a Network Good: Evidence from Unemployment and the Standard Workweek.” Sociological Science 1: 10-27.
  • Received: October 16, 2013
  • Accepted: October 24, 2013
  • Editors: Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v1.a2

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