2018-2021 | FWO
In this proposed research project we want to examine the role of social class differences in children’s daily lives. More specifically, we want to place the issue of children’s time within the context of the family and study its incidence over time. In the past decades, we have seen important changes in how family life is organized. The increases in parental education and declining family size have changed children’s wellbeing in a positive way, with affective relationships becoming more central. Parents are increasingly willing and more able to invest a lot of time and money in the childrearing process. However, both psychologists and sociologists have indicated that when it comes to childrearing values, parental social class plays a key role. For a better understanding of parent/child relationships and contemporary family dynamics, studying time use within the family context (taking the role of both parents into account) is highly recommended. Family context will therefore function as the lens through which we will analyse the way that class differences shape the leisure activities of children. We will use detailed time-use data of both parents and their children collected in Belgium on a household level.
