Monthly Labor Review • May 2007 27

Time Use Studies: Childcare

Comparing childcare measures in the 

ATUS and earlier time-diary studies 

The American Time Use Survey’s measures of primary 

childcare and time with children are comparable

with those in earlier U.S. time-diary studies, 

but the secondary childcare measure is not

Mary Dorinda Allard is an 

economist in the Office 

of Employment and 

Unemployment Statistics, 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

e-mail: allard.dorinda@

bls.gov; Suzanne Bianchi 

is chair and professor 

of sociology, University 

of Maryland, e-mail: 

bianchi@umd.edu; Jay 

Stewart is a research 

economist in the Office 

of Employment and 

Unemployment Statistics, 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

e-mail: Stewart.Jay@bls.

gov; Vanessa R. Wight is a 

graduate student in the 

Department of Sociology, 

University of Maryland, 

e-mail: vwight@socy.umd.

edu.

Mary Dorinda Allard,

Suzanne Bianchi,

Jay Stewart, 

and

Vanessa R. Wight

One of the most important trends to 

alter family life in the latter half of 

the 20th century was the increase 

in women’s labor market opportunities and 

employment outside the home. This dramatic 

reallocation of women’s time raised questions 

about whether increased maternal time in 

the labor market deprives children of necessary time with their parents. For this reason, 

a number of studies have examined trends in 

parental time spent caring for children.1

There is a long tradition of measuring parental time in childcare in the United States using time-diary data.2

 The U.S. Department of 

Agriculture funded small scale nonnationally 

representative time-diary studies in the 1920s, 

1960s, and 1970s,3 and other institutions have 

collected nationally representative time-diary 

data at roughly 10-year intervals, beginning 

in 1965.4 Most recently, the American Time 

Use Survey (ATUS), which is sponsored by the 

Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by 

the U.S. Census Bureau, began collecting data 

on a continuous basis in 2003. These data provide a rich source of information about how 

Americans spend their time—including time 

spent caring for children. 

Most time-diary studies use similar data 

collection methods. Respondents are asked 

to sequentially describe what they did during 

a 24-hour period (the “diary day”), which is 

often the previous day. Each time period for 

which there is a separate activity reported is 

an “episode.” For each episode, respondents 

are asked to report what they were doing 

(their primary activity), how long they were 

doing it, who was with them, and where they 

were. Some time-diary studies also ask respondents to report what else they were doing during the episode, which is coded as the 

secondary activity. When the respondent reports doing more than one activity, the primary activity is the one that the respondent 

indicated was the main activity, although it 

is the convention in time-diary studies that 

traveling—even when done in conjunction with another activity, such as feeding 

a child—is always considered the primary 

activity.5 

Time-use researchers have developed 

three concepts to measure parental investments in childcare: primary childcare, secondary childcare, and time spent with children. Primary childcare is childcare that is 

done as the respondent’s primary activity and 

typically includes activities in which a parent 

is directly engaged in caregiving or activities 

that promote children’s well-being. Secondary 

childcare is time spent doing childcare as a 

secondary activity. To avoid double counting 

parents’ time, estimates of secondary childcare typically exclude episodes for which 
28 Monthly Labor Review • May 2007

Time Use Studies: Childcare

the primary activity was childcare. Secondary childcare 

activities can include talking or reading to a child while 

doing something else, but could also include “looking after” a child. Time spent with children is measured using the 

“who-with” information from the time diary and includes 

time spent in activities during which a child was present, 

but not necessarily participating in the respondent’s activity. This tends to be a more expansive measure of childcare 

because it includes time spent in activities other than primary or secondary childcare. 

With the introduction of the ATUS, researchers have 

been eager to compare the ATUS to earlier time-diary 

studies. The ATUS definitions of primary childcare and 

time with children are essentially the same as those used 

in earlier time-diary studies, and the data in all of the 

surveys were collected using the time-diary approach described above. The ATUS gives more explicit instructions 

for collecting information on who is with the respondent 

during the episode,6 but the differences in methodology 

are relatively small. Therefore, we would expect any differences in estimates of these two measures from the ATUS 

and the earlier time-diary studies to be the result of true 

changes in behavior, rather than methodological differences. The ATUS approach to collecting secondary childcare is a departure from the approach used in the earlier 

time-diary studies that collected secondary activities, and 

some authors have noted that the secondary childcare estimates from the ATUS are much larger than the activity-based estimates of secondary childcare in the earlier 

studies.7 We hypothesize that much of this difference is 

due to the combined effect of the difference in concept 

and the difference in methodology. 

In this article, we compare the three childcare measures—primary childcare, secondary childcare, and time 

with children—in the ATUS to the corresponding measures from a recent time-diary study that collects secondary childcare using the “What else were you doing?” approach. We confirm that measures of primary childcare 

and time with children are similar between the two surveys and illustrate the differences between the two approaches to collecting secondary childcare. 

Secondary childcare in the ATUS and earlier studies

In the earlier time-diary studies that collected secondary 

activities, secondary childcare information was collected 

via the “What else were you doing?” question. The ATUS 

does not ask this question. However, because of the interest 

in measuring the amount of time people spend “looking 

after children,”8 the ATUS development team decided to 

collect information on this more passive form of childcare 

using questions modeled after those in Statistics Canada’s 

General Social Survey.9 These questions, which are asked 

after the time diary has been completed, ask respondents 

to report times and episodes during the diary day in which 

a child under age 13 was “in your care.”10 The “in your 

care” concept of secondary childcare is a more passive—

and a more encompassing—notion of childcare than the 

activity-based concept used in the past. Times when the 

respondent is actively engaged in secondary activities with 

children would also be considered times when children are 

“in your care,” while the reverse is not necessarily true. 

Exhibit 1 shows a sample time diary and illustrates 

the differences between the ATUS measure of secondary 

childcare and the measure used in previous time-diary 

studies. In episode 1, the respondent was taking the train 

and reading to a child. In both the ATUS and earlier timediary studies, “taking the train” would be considered the 

primary activity. In the earlier time-diary studies, “reading to a child” would have been captured by the “What 

else were you doing?” question and recorded as “talking 

and reading to children,”11 whereas the ATUS identifies 

this only as time when a child under age 13 was in the 

respondent’s care. Episode 2, in which the respondent was 

working while looking after a child, is similar. Both the 

ATUS and the earlier studies would consider “work” to be 

the primary activity and “looking after a child” to be the 

secondary activity. The much higher estimates of secondary childcare time in the ATUS suggest that very little of 

this passive childcare was captured in earlier time-diary 

studies. 

There are also two methodological differences between 

ATUS and earlier studies that may have led to differences 

in what is included in secondary childcare. First and foremost, the “What else were you doing?” question in earlier 

time-diary studies is open-ended, whereas the “in your 

care” question is closed-ended. The “What else were you 

doing?” question was intended to allow respondents to 

report any type of secondary activity—not just childcare. 

The emphasis is clearly on activities, and nothing in the 

question directs respondents to report passive childcare. If 

information about a specific topic is desired, closed-ended 

questions are typically more reliable.12 The “in your care” 

question makes it clear to respondents that they are being 

asked to report about passive childcare.13

The second methodological difference is that the “in 

your care” questions are asked after the time diary has 

been completed in ATUS, whereas the “What else were 

you doing?” question was asked for each episode in the 

earlier time-diary studies. It is not clear how this differ-
Monthly Labor Review • May 2007 29

ence translated into differences in estimates, but ATUS 

respondents may have been less likely to distinguish between times when they were and were not looking after 

a child under age 13 and may instead report blocks of 

time or episodes during which they were looking after 

children. 

About the data

For our comparisons, we use data from the 2003–04 

ATUS and the 2000 National Survey of Parents (NSP), 

which was a survey conducted by the Survey Research 

Center at the University of Maryland and funded by the 

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Working Families Program. 

The NSP was chosen because it is the most recent timediary study that systematically collects secondary activities. We expect any differences in estimates between the 

2000 NSP and the 2003–04 ATUS to be primarily due to 

differences in concepts or data collection because timeuse estimates typically do not change much over short 

periods of time. Given that the procedures and questions 

used in the NSP are similar to those in the earlier timediary studies, our assumption is that these comparisons 

show whether the ATUS data can be used in conjunction 

with earlier U.S. time-diary studies to generate meaningful statistics about changes in childcare time over the 

years. 

The samples from both surveys are restricted to parents age 18 and older who had at least one own child 

under age 13 living in the household.14 All estimates are 

generated using sample weights that have been adjusted 

to ensure correct day-of-week representation. 

Table 1 shows the distribution of parents by selected 

demographic characteristics for both the 2000 NSP and 

the 2003–04 ATUS. For the most part, parents across the 

two surveys have similar characteristics, although parents in the ATUS sample appear to be slightly older, more 

highly educated, and more likely to be married than 

those in the NSP sample. 

The 2000 NSP. In 2000 and 2001, the University of 

Maryland Survey Research Center interviewed a national probability sample of 1,200 parents living with 

children under age 18.15 The time-diary data were collected in computer-assisted telephone interviews that 

detailed respondents’ primary activities from midnight 

to midnight of the previous day, their secondary activities, 

and who was with them during the activities.

Primary childcare: In the NSP, there are nine activity 

codes for childcare, but no distinction is made between 

childcare done for household and nonhousehold children. (See appendix 1.) Activities are coded as childcare 

only if the care was done for a child under age 18. 

Secondary childcare: The activity codes for secondSample time diary and differences in coding between previous U.S. time-diary studies and the American 

Time Use Survey

Episode 

number

Start 

time

Stop 

time

What the 

respondent was 

actually doing

Previous U.S. time-diary studies1 American Time Use Survey2

Primary 

activity

What else 

were you 

doing?

Who 

with?

Primary 

activity

Was a child 

under 13 in 

your care?

Who with?

1 12:00 12:45 Taking the train 

and reading to a 

child

Travel to and 

from work

Talking and 

reading to 

child

Child Travel related 

to work

Yes Child

2 12:45 5:00 Work and looking 

after a child

Work Childcare if 

reported

Child Work Yes Not asked

3 5:00 5:45 Taking the train 

home with a child

Travel to and 

from work

Childcare if 

reported

Child Travel related 

to work

Yes Child

4 5:45 6:15 Helping a child 

with homework

Helping and 

teaching 

child

None Child Homework 

(household 

children)

Yes Child

5 6:15 7:00 Making dinner 

while looking 

after a child

Food 

preparation

Childcare if 

reported

Child Food and drink 

preparation

Yes Child

1 Primary childcare = 30 minutes; Secondary childcare (upper bound) = 6 hours 30 minutes; Secondary childcare (lower bound) = 45 

minutes; Time with children = 2 hours 45 minutes (excludes episodes where primary activity is sleeping, grooming, work, personal activities, 

could not remember, or refused to answer). 2

 Primary childcare = 30 minutes; Secondary childcare = 6 hours 30 minutes (excludes episodes where the primary activity is childcare); 

Time with children = 2 hours 45 minutes. 

NOTE: For illustrative purposes, activity codes for previous U.S. time-diary studies are taken from the 2000 National Survey of Parents 

(NSP). Previous time-diary studies did not all use consistent activity codes.

 Exhibit 1. 
30 Monthly Labor Review • May 2007

Time Use Studies: Childcare

 Demographic comparison of the 2000 NSP and the 2003–04 ATUS

Characteristic 

Number of observations 573 6,154 369 4,287

Employed 65.2 64.7 93.0 91.5

Family characteristics:

Percent married 68.8 73.5 86.9 91.5

Number of children under age 13 1.9 1.7 1.8 1.7

Percent with children under age 6 62.8 57.0 62.1 58.8

Number of children under age 6 1.0 .8 .9 .8

 Education: 

Less than high school 15.3 13.1 17.9 12.7

High school graduate 33.6 30.0 34.1 30.1

Some college, no degree 28.1 27.1 24.6 24.4

College graduate 23.0 29.8 23.4 32.9

 Age:

18–24 14.8 9.8 9.6 3.9

25–34 38.4 41.2 27.8 33.3

35–44 38.0 39.0 44.5 45.8

45–54 7.6 9.4 15.3 15.3

55 and older 1.2 .6 2.8 1.7

ary childcare in the NSP are the same nine codes used 

for primary childcare. To avoid double-counting time, 

estimates of secondary childcare in this article exclude 

episodes when the primary activity was childcare. Also, 

to make the measure more comparable to the ATUS, episodes are considered out of scope if the respondent was 

sleeping. Secondary childcare, like primary childcare, refers to the care of children under age 18, and it is impossible to separate out care for children under age 13 as is 

done in the ATUS.

Time with children: Time with children was calculated using the “who-with” information collected during 

the diary. Inspection of the NSP data revealed that the 

probes for the “who-with” question were not consistently 

applied by interviewers. In some cases, respondents did 

not report being with a child under age 18, even though 

it was clear from the verbatim response that a child was 

present. To illustrate: children were present during about 

72 percent of primary childcare episodes in the NSP data, 

but in 90 percent of primary childcare episodes in the 

ATUS data. To make the time with children measure 

more comparable to the ATUS measure, we calculated 

time with children as the sum of time spent with children, time in primary childcare activities, and time in 

secondary childcare activities, and then we adjusted the 

data to eliminate double counting.16 We also excluded 

episodes when the respondent was sleeping, grooming, 

engaging in personal or private activities, working at a 

job, could not remember, or refused to answer, because 

the ATUS does not collect “who-with” information for 

these activities.

The 2003–04 ATUS. The ATUS is a large nationally 

representative sample that is drawn from households 

that have just completed participation in the Current 

Population Survey (CPS). The sample size of the pooled 

2003–04 ATUS data is about 35,000 observations, which 

is reduced to about 10,400 observations after imposing 

our sample restrictions.17 Time-diary data were collected through computer-assisted telephone interviews, 

and the “diary day” was from 4 a.m. the previous day to 4 

a.m. on the interview day, rather than from midnight to 

midnight as in the NSP. 

Primary childcare: As in the NSP, an activity in the 

ATUS was only coded as primary childcare if it was 

done for a child under age 18. The ATUS coding lexicon 

is more detailed than that used in the NSP, having 23 

different primary childcare activity codes for household 

 Table 1. 

Mothers Fathers

NSP ATUS NSP ATUS

SOURCE: Authors’ calculations from the 2000 National Survey 

of Parents and 2003–04 data from the American Time Use Survey. 

NOTE: The sample for both surveys is restricted to parents age 

18 and older who had at least one child under age 13 living in the 

household.
Monthly Labor Review • May 2007 31

children and 23 for nonhousehold children—46 codes 

total. (See appendix 1 for a crosswalk between the two 

sets of childcare codes.) Even though the ATUS codes are 

more detailed, the types of activities considered to be primary childcare are very similar in the two surveys. As previously mentioned, childcare reported in the NSP did not 

distinguish between whether the care was for household 

or nonhousehold children. Therefore, we combined the 

NOTE: The sample for both surveys is restricted to parents age 

18 and older who had at least one child under age 13 living in the 

household. In order to make the NSP measures of time with children 

comparable to the ATUS, reports of children present during episodes 

coded as sleeping, grooming, personal activities, working at a job, 

don’t know, or refused are considered out of scope. Similarly, episodes 

of sleep done in conjunction with secondary childcare in the NSP are 

considered to be out of scope. 

SOURCE: Authors’ calculations from the 2000 National Survey of 

Parents and 2003–04 data from the American Time Use Survey. 

 Table 2. Comparison of primary childcare, time with children, and secondary childcare, 2000 NSP

 and 2003–04 ATUS

 Childcare measure 2000 NSP 2003–04 ATUS

Hours per day spent by parents—

In primary childcare:

 All 1.73 1.84

 Fathers 1.15 1.14

 Mothers 2.10 2.32

With children under age 18:

 All 6.30 6.28

 Fathers 4.67 4.82

 Mothers 7.35 7.31

In secondary childcare with children under age 18:

 All .77 ...

 Fathers .39 ...

 Mothers 1.02 ...

In secondary childcare with children under age 13:

 All ... 5.83

Fathers ... 4.47

 Mothers ... 6.78

Percent of parents reporting—

Doing any primary childcare:

 All 74.5 75.0

Fathers 59.8 60.5

Mothers 84.0 85.1

Any time with children under age 18:

 All 96.0 95.4

Fathers 92.4 92.1

Mothers 98.3 97.7

Doing any secondary childcare with children under age 18:

 All 36.8 ...

Fathers 22.2 ...

Mothers 46.2 ...

Doing any secondary childcare with children under age 13:

 All ... 89.5

Fathers ... 81.7

Mothers ... 95.0

 

 

 
32 Monthly Labor Review • May 2007

Time Use Studies: Childcare

care of both household and nonhousehold children in the 

ATUS estimates of childcare time to make this measure 

more comparable to the NSP.

Secondary childcare: As noted earlier, the secondary 

childcare measure is derived from the “in your care” questions. We excluded times when the respondent reported 

doing primary childcare, times when the respondent was 

asleep, and times when all household children under age 

13 were asleep.18 

Time with children: Time with children was calculated 

using the “who-with” information collected in the diary. 

The “who-with” question identifies all household members (and own nonhousehold children) by household roster number, so it is possible to determine the exact age of 

household members who were present during each activity. For nonown nonhousehold children, it is possible to 

determine only if they are under age 18. As noted earlier, the ATUS definition of being “with” the respondent 

is more specific than the one used in the NSP. Time with 

children includes all time that the respondent reported 

being with any child under age 18 (except for the activities 

for which the “who-with” questions are not asked: sleeping, grooming, personal activities, working at a job, could 

not remember, and refused to answer). 

Childcare in the ATUS and the NSP

Table 2 shows estimates of time spent in primary childcare, time spent in secondary childcare, and time with children. The estimates for primary childcare are remarkably 

similar between the two surveys. Parents spent about 1.7 

hours per day in primary childcare in the NSP and about 

1.8 hours per day in primary childcare in the ATUS. The 

average amount of time fathers spent in primary childcare was almost identical between the two surveys, while 

estimates for mothers were slightly higher in the ATUS. 

These small differences, which are neither substantively 

nor statistically significant, suggest that the two surveys 

are measuring essentially the same concept for primary 

childcare.19 

The estimates of time with children are also strikingly 

similar. (See table 2.) In both surveys, parents are spending about 6.3 hours per day with children, and the largest difference (for fathers) is only 0.15 of an hour. These 

similarities suggest that the time-with-children measure 

from the NSP is approximately the same as time with children in the ATUS. Furthermore, the percentage of parents 

who report doing any primary childcare during the day or 

spending any time with children are remarkably similar 

between the two surveys. 

The results shown in table 2 lead to the conclusion that 

the two surveys appear to be measuring the same concept for primary childcare and very similar concepts for 

time with children. Because of the similarities in these 

two measures, we proceed under the assumption that any 

differences in secondary childcare estimates are due to 

differences in concepts and methods that are specific to 

the measurement of secondary childcare, rather than any 

general survey effects.20 

The similarities between the two surveys end when we 

look at secondary childcare. Secondary childcare in the 

ATUS is more than 7 times as large as the NSP measure—

5.8 hours per day versus 0.8 of an hour per day—even 

though the NSP measure includes secondary childcare for 

children under age 18, whereas ATUS restricts secondary 

childcare to children under age 13. Table 2 also shows 

large differences between the two surveys in the percentage of parents reporting any secondary childcare. More 

than twice as many parents report doing secondary childcare in the ATUS, compared with the NSP. These differences are consistent with our hypothesis that the ATUS 

captures more passive childcare than the NSP and other 

earlier time-diary studies. 

A comparison of time spent with children to the sum of 

time spent in primary and secondary childcare highlights 

the difference in concepts between the two surveys. In the 

NSP, time spent with children is considerably greater than 

the combined time spent in primary and secondary childcare (6.3 hours vs. 2.5 hours). In contrast, in the ATUS time 

spent in primary and secondary childcare is larger than 

time spent with children (7.7 versus 6.3 hours). These differences reflect the difference between the activity-based 

concept in the NSP and the passive-care concept used in 

the ATUS. 

In table 3, we perform an episode-level analysis to determine the extent to which secondary childcare time coincides with time spent with children in the two surveys. 

The episodes in each sample are divided into four groups 

defined by whether the respondent was providing secondary childcare and whether the respondent was with a child. 

Episodes were excluded from the analysis if the main activity was one of the activities for which the ATUS does 

not collect “who-with” information. It was also necessary 

to make some minor modifications to our definitions of 

“time with children.” Because of differences in the definition of secondary childcare in the two surveys, it was not 

possible to make these comparisons entirely consistent. In 

the NSP, secondary childcare data were collected for care 

of children under age 18, and the NSP portion of table 3 

uses an age restriction of age 18. In the ATUS, secondary 
Monthly Labor Review • May 2007 33

childcare data were collected for care of children under 

age 13, so the ATUS portion of the table uses age 13 as a 

comparison point. For nonhousehold children, we had to 

maintain the under age 18 restriction because ATUS does 

not allow any finer distinction.21 In table 3, the first four 

columns show the fraction of episodes in the four cells, 

where the entries in each row sum to 100 percent. For 

example, the first column shows that in the NSP, the respondent was not providing secondary childcare and was 

not with a child under age 18 in 41.6 percent of episodes. 

Summing the third and fourth columns in table 3 shows 

that respondents report doing secondary childcare in about 

4 percent of all episodes in the NSP, compared with 60 percent of episodes in the ATUS. When respondents provide 

secondary childcare, a child is present about 90 percent of 

the time in the NSP, but only 73 percent of the time in the 

ATUS (the next to last column). Finally, when respondents 

are with children, they provide secondary childcare in 92 

percent of episodes in the ATUS, compared with only 6 percent of episodes in the NSP (the last column).22 

Putting together the results in tables 2 and 3, it is 

clear that the secondary childcare measures in the two 

surveys are very different from each other. The fact that 

children under age 18 are present during nearly all secondary childcare episodes in the NSP is consistent with an 

activity-based concept, while the lower percentage in the 

ATUS is more consistent with a passive-care concept. NSP 

respondents could have reported that they were looking 

after children as a secondary activity, but it appears that 

they rarely did so. Almost 90 percent of parents in the 

ATUS reported doing some secondary childcare on their 

diary day (table 2), and parents provided secondary childcare nearly all of the time they were with children under 

age 13 (table 3); these two facts are also consistent with 

the passive-care concept. Additional support for the activity-based concept in the NSP comes from the fact that a 

much smaller fraction (30 percent) of parents in the NSP

reported providing secondary childcare, along with the 

fact that most of the time spent with children in the NSP

does not involve secondary childcare.

Table 3. Distribution of episodes by presence of children and provision of secondary childcare, 2000 

 NSP and 2003–04 ATUS

Percent of all episodes Percent of episodes 

Survey Percent of secondary with a child under

childcare episodes age 18 present

with a child during which the 

under age 18 respondent is 

 NSP present providing

 secondary childcare

 

All 41.6 54.3 0.4 3.7 100.0 89.8 6.4

 Fathers 50.1 47.7 .2 2.0 100.0 90.4 4.0

 Mothers 38.0 57.1 .5 4.4 100.0 89.5 7.2

 Percent of episodes 

 Percent of secondary with a child under

 childcare episodes age 13 present

 Total with a child during which the 

 under age 13 respondent is 

 present providing 

 secondary childcare

All 36.5 3.8 16.0 43.8 100.0 73.3 92.1

 Fathers 48.2 5.8 12.4 33.6 100.0 73.1 85.4

 Mothers 30.1 2.7 17.9 49.3 100.0 73.3 94.9

Total

Not providing secondary 

childcare

Providing secondary 

childcare

Not with a

child under 

age 18

With a 

child under 

age 18

Not with a 

child under 

age 18

With a 

child under

 age 18

Not with a

 child under 

age 131

With a 

child under 

age 131

With a 

child under 

age 131

Not with a

 child under 

age 131

ATUS

1

 For nonhousehold children the age cutoff is 18.

NOTE: The sample for both surveys is restricted to parents age 

18 and older who had at least one child under age 13 living in the 

household. The first four columns show the percentage of all episodes 

in each of the four cells defined by whether the respondent was 

providing secondary childcare and whether the respondent was with a 

child. For example, the entry in the second column of the NSP panel 

indicates that in 54.3 percent of episodes the respondent was with a 

child under 18 but was not providing secondary childcare.

SOURCE: Authors’ calculations from the 2000 National Survey of 

Parents and 2003–04 data from the American Time Use Survey.
34 Monthly Labor Review • May 2007

Time Use Studies: Childcare

Notes

1

 Liana C. Sayer, Suzanne M. Bianchi, and John P. Robinson, “Are 

Parents Investing Less in Children? Trends in Mothers’ and Fathers’ 

Time with Children,” American Journal of Sociology, July 2004, pp. 1–

43; and Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Maternal Employment and Time with 

Children: Dramatic Change or Surprising Continuity?” Demography, 

November 2000, pp. 139–54.

2

 Time-diary data, which describe a person’s activities on a given 

day, are considered to be more accurate for activities such as household 

work and childcare than are data gathered using stylized questions, 

which ask respondents to report about time spent on an activity over 

time, such as for a week ( “About how much time do you spend taking care of children per week?”). See John P. Robinson, “The Validity 

and Reliability of Diaries versus Alternative Time Use Measures,” in F. 

Thomas Juster and Frank P. Stafford, eds., Time, Goods, and Well-Being

(Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Survey Research Center, Institute 

for Social Research, 1985). 3

 W. K. Bryant, “A Comparison of the Household Work of Married Females: The Mid-1920s and the Late 1960s,” Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 1996, vol. 24, pp. 358–84. 4

 The 1965 and 1975 time-diary studies were conducted by the 

Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, and the 1985 

and 1995 studies were conducted by the Survey Research Center at 

the University of Maryland. See Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa A. Milkie, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life

(New York, Russell Sage, 2006); and John P. Robinson and Geoffrey 

Godbey, Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Spend Their Time

(University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). 5

 Common secondary activities include listening to the radio, 

watching TV, eating, or communicating, but in principle they could be 

anything that could be done as a primary activity (except travel). 6

 In the ATUS, individuals are considered to be “with” the respondent 

if they were in the same room or if they accompanied the respondent 

at locations away from home. Earlier time-diary studies did not have 

explicit definitions. 7

 Muriel Egerton, Kimberly Fisher, Jonathan I. Gershuny, and others, “American time use 1965–2003: The Construction of a Historical 

Comparative File, and Consideration of its Usefulness in the Construction of Extended National Accounts for the USA,” ISER Working 

THE COMPARABILITY OF THREE CHILDCARE MEASURES—primary childcare, secondary childcare, and time 

with children—between the ATUS and earlier U.S. time-diary studies was examined in this article. We used the NSP to 

represent the earlier time-diary studies because it is recent 

and used the same methods to collect secondary childcare 

as earlier studies. The ATUS and the NSP have similar concepts and use similar methods for collecting primary childcare and time with children, but they differ markedly on 

both counts with regard to secondary childcare. The secondary childcare concept in the NSP and earlier time-diary 

studies is activity-based, and the data are collected using 

an open-ended question, “What else were you doing?” that 

was asked for each activity. In contrast, the ATUS concept is 

passive and is collected using closed-ended questions that 

specifically ask respondents to report times and activities 

during which a child under age 13 was “in your care.” 

Primary childcare and time with children estimates 

from the ATUS and the NSP were nearly identical, although it was necessary to adjust the NSP data to compensate for inconsistent probing by interviewers. The 

secondary childcare measures from the two surveys were 

very different—5.8 hours per day in the ATUS versus 0.8 

hours per day in the NSP—and the differences were consistent with the conceptual and methodological differences between the two surveys. Thus, we conclude that 

when comparably defined, the primary childcare and time 

with children measures in the ATUS can be meaningfully 

compared with the corresponding measures from earlier 

U.S. time-diary studies. Meaningful comparisons cannot be made between secondary childcare in ATUS and 

earlier U.S. time-diary studies. 

Paper 2005-28 (Colchester, University of Essex, December 2005); and 

Suzanne M. Bianchi, Vanessa R. Wight, and Sara B. Raley, “Maternal 

Employment and Family Caregiving: Rethinking Time with Children 

in the ATUS,” paper presented at the ATUS Early Results Conference, 

Bethesda, MD, Dec. 9, 2005. 8

 Nancy Folbre, Jayoung Yoon, Kade Finnoff, and Allison Sidle Fuligni, “By What Measure? Family Time Devoted to Children in the 

United States,” Demography, May 2005, pp. 373–90. 9

 The main criterion for the ATUS concept of secondary childcare 

is that the respondent must be able to provide assistance to the child if 

necessary. This implies that the respondent is in the general vicinity of 

the child and has a general idea what the child is doing. However, the 

respondent need not be in the same room as the child to be providing 

secondary childcare. Thus, the respondent may not have been “with” a 

household child under age 13 when providing secondary childcare at 

home—the child could have been in another part of the house or in 

the respondent’s yard. It is also possible, although not common, for the 

respondent to have been “with” a child under age 13 and not have provided secondary childcare. One way this could occur would be when 

one or more adults were present, and the respondent did not consider 

himself or herself to be looking after the child. 10 Separate questions are asked for the respondent’s children living 

in the household, respondent’s children not living in the household, 

other children living in the household, and other children not living 

in the household. For all but the last, the children’s names are filled in 

from the household roster. 11 Previous U.S. time-diary studies used a variety of different codes, 

and the actual activity descriptions may have varied. However, previous 

studies would have identified the nature of secondary activities. 12 Floyd J. Fowler, Survey Research Methods, Applied Social Research Methods Series, vol. 1 (Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 

Inc., 1993). 13 Cognitive testing of the secondary childcare questions revealed 

that “in your care” best conveyed the passive childcare concept to respondents. See Lisa K. Schwartz, “The American Time Use Survey: 

cognitive pretesting,” Monthly Labor Review, February 2002, pp. 34–

44. 14 “Own” children are either biological children, stepchildren, or ad-
Monthly Labor Review • May 2007 35

Appendix 1. Primary childcare codes in the 2000 NSP and the 2003–04 ATUS 

NSP ATUS 

 Activity description Activity description

20 Time spent on baby care [same as NSP code 21, depends on age of child]

21 Time spent on childcare 030101 Physical care for household children

 030109 Looking after household children (as primary activity)

030199 Caring for and helping household children, not elsewhere classified

 040101 Physical care for nonhousehold children

 040109 Looking after nonhousehold children (as primary activity)

040199 Caring for and helping nonhousehold children, not elsewhere classified

22 Time spent on helping 

 and teaching 030107 Helping/teaching household children (not related to education)

 030201 Homework (household children)

 030203 Home schooling of household children

 030204 Waiting associated with household children’s education

 030299 Activities related to household children’s education, 

not elsewhere classified

 040107 Helping/teaching nonhousehold children (not related to education)

 040201 Homework (nonhousehold children)

 040203 Home schooling of nonhousehold children

 040204 Waiting associated with nonhousehold children’s education

 040299 Activities related to nonhousehold children’s education, 

not elsewhere classified

opted children. Other relatives under age 18, such as grandchildren, 

would not be considered “own” children. 15 The response rate in the NSP was 64.0 percent. 16 This adjustment would tend to increase time with children relative to the ATUS, because all primary and secondary childcare time 

would be counted as having a child present, even though it appears that 

this is not always the case in the ATUS. As discussed in footnote 9, the 

respondent need not be “with” a child when providing secondary childcare in the ATUS. It is also possible, in both surveys, for a respondent 

to provide primary childcare without a child present. For example, the 

respondent may be driving to school to pick up a child. It is likely that 

the NSP misses some time with children for nonchildcare episodes, 

although we do not believe this effect is very large. 17 The response rate in the ATUS was 57.6 percent for 2003–04. 18 The last two restrictions were made because cognitive testing of 

the ATUS questions revealed some inconsistencies across respondents 

in how they answered the secondary childcare questions (some respondents included times when they or all household children under age 13 

were asleep while others did not). For this reason, official estimates of 

secondary childcare exclude times when the respondent or all household children under age 13 were asleep. To determine when the household children were asleep, the respondents were asked when the first 

child under age 13 woke up and when the last child under age 13 went 

to sleep (naps are ignored). 19 Our conclusion that primary childcare is comparable between 

the ATUS and earlier time-diary studies is at odds with Egerton et al., 

who compared the 2003 ATUS to the earlier U.S. time-diary studies 

conducted in 1965, 1975, 1985, and 1992–94 (see Egerton and others, 

“American Tme Use 1965–2003”). They noted that primary childcare 

“steeply increases” between the 1992–94 study and the 2003 ATUS, and 

concluded that while sample composition may explain some of the increase, “...it also seems likely that there is a strong instrument effect.” 

Our estimates using the same data combined with data from the 1995 

University of Maryland time-diary study and the 2000 NSP lead us to 

believe that it is the 1992–94 data that are anomalous. Primary childcare time fell by 1 hour per week between the 1985 and 1992–94 studies, but increased by about 2 hours per week between the 1992–94 and 

1995 studies, by 3 hours between the 1995 and 2000 studies, and by 1.5 

hours between the 2000 NSP and the 2003 ATUS. Thus, we agree that 

time spent in primary childcare did increase between 1985 and 2003, 

but it seems more likely that there was a gradual increase between 1985 

and 1995, rather than a decrease between 1985 and 1992–94 and a 

sharp increase between 1992–94 and 1995. 

20 One difference between the surveys that we have not discussed 

is the difference in the procedures used to contact respondents. The 

NSP called respondents every day until the respondent was reached, 

while the ATUS used a designated-day approach. It has been shown 

that the NSP approach tended to oversample days when the respondent 

was away from home (see Jay Stewart, “Assessing the Bias Associated 

with Alternative Contact Strategies in Telephone Time-Use Surveys,” 

Survey Methodology, December 2002, pp. 157–68). This could bias estimates of childcare upward if childcare tends to be done away from 

home and downward if childcare tends to be done at home. Taking 

a quick look at the data, it appears that the two datasets do not differ much with respect to where primary childcare activities occurred. 

About 59 percent of primary childcare episodes (77 percent of time) 

were at home in the NSP, compared with about 57 percent (73 percent 

of time) in the ATUS. This suggests that the difference in contact procedures did not have a large effect on the childcare measures. 21 Our inability to restrict time with children to children under age 

13 for nonhousehold children in ATUS likely made very little difference. 

Very little secondary childcare was done for nonhousehold children, 

and ATUS estimates generated using only data on household children 

were virtually identical. 22 We noted earlier that probes for the “who-with” questions were 

inconsistently applied in the NSP. However, we do not believe this effect to be large. For example, the percentage in the last column of table 

3 for the NSP would be at most 1 percentage point higher if we were to 

assume that a child was present during all episodes of secondary childcare.

See note at end of table.

Activity

code

Activity 

code
36 Monthly Labor Review • May 2007

Time Use Studies: Childcare

23 Time spent on talking and reading 030102 Reading to/with household children

 030106 Talking with/listening to household children

 040102 Reading to/with nonhousehold children

 040106 Talking with/listening to nonhousehold children

24 Time spent on indoor playing 030103 Playing with household children, not sports

 030104 Arts and crafts with household children

 040103 Playing with nonhousehold children, not sports

 040104 Arts and crafts with nonhousehold children

25 Time spent on outdoor play 030105 Playing sports with household children

 040105 Playing sports with nonhousehold children

26 Time spent on medical care 

 for child 030301 Providing medical care to household children

 030302 Obtaining medical care for household children

 030303 Waiting associated with medical care of household children

 030399 Activities related to household children’s health, 

not elsewhere classified

 040301 Providing medical care to nonhousehold children

 040302 Obtaining medical care for nonhousehold children

 040303 Waiting associated with medical care of nonhousehold children

 040399 Activities related to nonhousehold children’s health, 

not elsewhere classified

27 Time spent on other childcare 030108 Organization/planning for household children

 030110 Attending household children’s events

 030111 Waiting for/with household children

 030112 Picking up/dropping off household children

 040108 Organization/planning for nonhousehold children

 040110 Attending nonhousehold children’s events

 040111 Waiting for/with nonhousehold children

 040112 Picking up/dropping off nonhousehold children

29 Time spent on travel related

 to childcare 170301 Travel related to caring for and helping household children

 170401 Travel related to caring for and helping nonhousehold children

NOTE: This crosswalk is not exact. For example, the ATUS does not determine whether the respondent was indoors or outdoors, so the 

mapping into NSP codes 24 and 25 were based on whether the activities are usually done indoors or outdoors. Also, there are two ATUS activity 

codes that are normally considered to be childcare that are not included in this crosswalk because there are no comparable codes in the NSP. 

These are “meetings and school conferences” for household (030202) and nonhousehold (040202) children. In the NSP, meetings and school 

conferences are coded under “time spent on child, youth, and family organizations” (67). 

Appendix 1. Continued—Primary childcare codes in the 2000 NSP and the 2003–04 ATUS 

ATUS 

 Activity description Activity description Activity

 code 

NSP

 Activity

code