An Empirical Analysis of In-Home Time Commitments of Parents

This paper contributes to the literature on activity-based travel modeling and time-use analysis by examining the in-home time commitments of parents. Data from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey were used to analyze the in-home time investments of children and parents in young, nuclear-family households (i.e., male-female couple, one or two children, and all children between the ages of 0 and 12 years). The results indicate that, on an average, children between ages of 0-12 years spend over 9 hours in non-sleep time in-home, with younger children spending considerably more time than the older children. In only about 18% of the households, children were observed to spend time in-home unaccompanied by either of their parents suggesting that children are very less likely to be left in-home unsupervised by their parents. Together, these results underscore the in-home time commitment needs of parents in young nuclear family households. Further, the empirical results reinforce the continued role of mothers are the primary care-givers of children. On examining the inter-dependencies in the in-home time investment patterns of mothers and fathers, we find that the non-working member of the household (often the mother) assumes a greater role in accompanying the child when in-home. Consequently, the travel pattern of this parent is likely to be synchronized to a greater extent with the activity-travel pattern of the child. Future activity-travel models should aim at explicitly incorporating such linkages.

• Corporate Authors:

  World Conference on Transport Research Society

  Secretariat, 14 Avenue Berthelot
  69363 Lyon cedex 07,   France 
• Authors:
  • Srinivasan, Sivaramakrishnan
• Conference:
  • 11th World Conference on Transport Research
  • Location: Berkeley CA, United States
  • Date: 2007-6-24 to 2007-6-28
• Publication Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 24p
• Monograph Title: 11th World Conference on Transport Research

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Activity choices; Children; Empirical methods; Households; Parents; Time; Travel patterns; Travel time
• Uncontrolled Terms: Activity based analysis
• Geographic Terms: San Francisco Bay Area
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01118449
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 13 2009 9:30AM