Parental investments and engagement: New measures from a parental time use app

Abstract This work presents new measures of parental investments that capture the quality of daily parent-child interactions. We develop a new app that collects 24-hour parental time diaries and child’s engagement and feelings during each activity performed with the parent. Using data from a sample of over 500 parents with preschool-aged children, we find that, on average, parents spend nearly 50 hours per week with their child. Our study introduces Engaged Time to capture moments of intense parent-child interaction, showing that it accounts for 86% (roughly 43 hours) of total time spent together. We also document about 14 hours per week of intense interaction and meaningful teaching moments that would go unrecognized if measured solely by the traditional concept of Quality Time as defined in existing literature. This study is the first to systematically measure Positive Time – moments when parents are actively engaged, and the child is notably happy – highlighting the critical role of a positive parent-child relationship in child development. We further examine how these measures vary by weekday versus weekend and across factors such as parental education, gender, employment status, and family composition.