Acta Sociologica, Ahead of Print.
Parental time with children is important for children’s developmental outcomes. Family type may affect the amount of time parents can and will invest in children. Using time-use panel data obtained from two waves of the Danish Time Use Survey, linked with administrative records, the study shows that parental family type had a substantial impact on the time parents spent with children. When controlling for constant unobserved individual traits, likely to affect both time-use and family type, differences in time-use increase, indicating positive selection into non-intact family types. Single parents and parents in reconstituted families spent less time on developmental activities, such as talking, reading and playing with the child, whereas parents living in reconstituted families also spent less time on non-developmental activities, such as transporting the child or performing basic childcare. Based on our findings, there are indications that cross-sectional results showing little difference in parents’ involvement in children across family types partly emanate from differential selection in family types.