Surveys reveal that today’s busy parents feel guilty about spending too little time with their children—but the actual numbers on American family life tell a different story. Since the mid-1970s, according to Pew Research, the time that fathers spend on child care has almost tripled. As for mothers, their time has gone up 57%—even though 71% of them are now working outside the home.  The real question is: Does all this extra time with our children do them any good?  A large-scale study, published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, is the latest effort to get some answers. Researchers used time diaries and survey data for 1,605 children, ages 3 to 11, and 778 adolescents, ages 12 to 18, at two points in time. They wanted to see, in particular, if the amount of time a mother spent with her children was associated with positive outcomes for them.  Lead researcher Melissa Milkie, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, said that she was surprised by the results. She and her team found no significant relationship between a child’s academic achievement, behavior or emotional well-being and the amount of either “engaged” time a mother spent with the child or “accessible” time (that is, time when she was available but not interacting directly). They found only a small boost in the adolescent years. Some positive outcomes were linked instead to factors such as a mother’s level of education, household income and family structure.  Dr. Milkie emphasizes that the study shouldn’t be taken to mean that time with parents doesn’t matter. Her research didn’t focus on what families were actually doing—eating dinner together, for instance, or going to sports or music practice—but previous research has linked spending “quality time” with parents to positive childhood outcomes, like better academic performance and higher self-esteem.  “Parents today are sometimes so driven to raise high-achieving children that they overlook the simple importance of…interacting one on one,” says Gail Fernandez, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Orange County, Calif. When you use such moments to signal to your children that they matter, she adds, it gives them confidence to make better life choices.  Here are some suggestions for activities that can help parents spend more quality time with their children:  Listen to music. In a study of 760 young people published last year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers found that listening to music together as a family helps to create bonds, particularly in the teen years, when communication can be difficult. Music can also play an important part in building a family’s identity, researchers note, and in shaping positive memories. Even just talking about music or a particular song is associated with greater well-being.  Drive the conversation. Car rides give you a captive audience—take advantage of it. As a conversation starter, Bruce Feiler, author of “The Secrets of Happy Families,” suggests what he calls the “Bad & Good” game. Everyone, parents included, takes a turn talking about one bad thing and one good thing that happened during the day. It lets parents show that, when problems arise, there’s a way to get through them.  Talk about homework. Homework has been called the new family dinner—and working on it together, if kept positive, can be a satisfying experience for both parents and children. With adolescents in particular, taking an interest in what they read and in the classes that engage them is a way to show they matter to you. It is also an opportunity, says Dr. Fernandez, to learn how a child feels about school and classmates.  Take a vacation. Research by Purdue University Professor Xinran Lehto, who studies tourism, has found that vacations help create enduring family ties. “You’re in a new, unfamiliar setting, and there’s a sense that you’re all in it together,” she says. On holiday, role reversals can happen, as when a child teaches a parent to ski, and these moments build greater intimacy and familiarity. “It’s not only the trip itself that bonds,” she says, “but after you come back, you now have shared memories that will continue to reinforce and even grow the bond over the years.”  Be Facebook friends. In a study of 491 adolescents and their parents published last year in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, researchers found that adolescents who engaged with their parents on social media felt more connected to them—and the connection grew stronger with more frequent interactions. Granted, social media may not exactly be a parent’s idea of “quality time”—but even shared “likes” are no small thing in our busy, distracted modern families.  — Ms. Wallace is a freelance writer in New York and a contributing editor to EmpoweringParents.com.
Research finds that quality, rather than quantity, counts most when it comes to spending time with your children—and offers strategies for getting the most out of that time.