The Quality of Family Time among Young Adolescents in Single-Parent and Married-Parent Families

The opportunities children have for interaction with, support from, and transmission of values from family members are partly circumscribed by daily patterns of time use and emotional states; therefore, attempts to understand effects of single- and married-parent family life upon children need to take these into account. In a study using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 396 young adolescents from single-parent and married-parent families carried pagers for one week and reported on their daily activities, companionship, and quality of subjective experience. Findings show that adolescents' overall patterns of time use and subjective experience are similar in single- and married-parent families, although this similarity is achieved by a reorganization of activities within family subsystems. When children in single-parent families are with their mothers, they are more likely to be engaged in instrumental tasks than are children in married-parent families; when with their fathers, they are more likely to be engaged in discretionary activities. Youth in single-parent families perceive both their mothers and fathers as more friendly than do youth in married-parent families.