With Children's Needs, Time Is Viewed Differently

Welcome to the wonderful world of child care. It is radically different from the world of work. Time is experienced differently. Life has a different logic.

Psychologist Carie L. Forden, Queen's College in Flushing, N.Y., studied the differences on how employed mothers and full time at-home mothers experienced time. Here's what she found.

Quality vs. quantity. Women judged their time on the job in terms of quantity while time spent in child reading was judged in terms of quality.

- Time is a convenient measure of how much was accomplished instead of how well it was done or how it felt. Women who held jobs outside of the home were able to set time frames for their activities and goals. They could evaluate their job performance in terms of the number of tasks they accomplished. Full-time mothers set goals in terms of the qualities they wished their children to have.

When it comes to child care, quantity makes little sense at all. It will take years before a mother's presence and responsiveness shows up in terms of character and values of her offspring. This vision of time is more responsive to natural rhythms and human potential.

- Time on the job had clear boundaries with well-defined limits. On the other hand, child care occupied all of a woman's time and was mixed in with everything else she did. It was difficult for mothers to estimate the amount of time they spent in child care each day.

- Time on the job could be controlled and scheduled while the tasks involved in child care were controlled by the needs of the child. Forden's study further showed that it was child care and not housework that gives being at home a different experience with time. Housework could be put off, children couldn't.

Employed mothers didn't feel they did enough with the time they had and felt frustrated by their inability to structure their time.

At-home mothers also felt a lack of free time. They reported that being "on call" one hundred percent of the time was a draining experience. Their time wasn't their own. The needs of the child came first. They often had to stop whatever they were doing to attend to the child's needs.

- At-home mothers felt increasingly out-of-step with a world that places less and less on time devoted to child care. If time is being judged by personal achievement and productivity, then their time doesn't have value.

- They have an inner sense of the value of what they are doing - that time with their children is enriching rather than impoverishing. Unfortunately, the lack of cultural recognition and reinforcement creates its share of doubts and dissatisfaction.

Implications for fathers. As men we are even more acculturated to the world of work. We experience time more in terms of doing than in relating. We have an ability to separate themselves from children's needs. We are better able to attend to our own needs, leisure, and projects while tuning out what is happening around us.

Even if we are aware of a pressing need, we find it difficult to drop what we are doing. Child care is seen as something that can be put off to a more convenient time slot.

We also feel we have the luxury of picking and choosing when to be helpful and get involved. Our time is our own, even at home. Our wives are expected to have the listening ear and the vigilant sixth sense about what is going on with the children.

Women's resentment with fathers in the home may not have to do with the amount of work they do but the fact the responsibility isn't truly shared.

Without that sense of truly being "on call," we have a hard time grasping, understanding and appreciating what the strain of constant child care can be like.

Appreciation for the role. To understand what mothers go through, fathers need opportunities to take total responsibility. We learn how many needs children have and how our own agenda had to take a back seat. Being Mr. Mom isn't easy.

Doing this gives one the experience on knowing how important getting a break away from the children really is. We learn how sharing the responsibility for child care truly helps with the feeling of partnership and much needed relief.

For employed mothers. Forden's research showed that when employed mothers experience control over their time and are able to create free time for themselves, they feel better about their lives in general.

With the right kind of support - quality child care, meaningful sharing of child care with husbands, and flex-time work arrangements - the combination of quantitative work time and qualitative home time can be rewarding. Unfortunately, those are difficult pieces to put into place.

For at-home mothers. At-home mothers also have to be good at finding time to meet their own needs and getting nurturing support from relationships that sustain them.

Unfortunately, their husbands may see child care as a woman's exclusive responsibility and not appreciate how demanding it really is.

More and more at-home mothers are isolated with their children. What is helpful is to be involved in other communal and creative projects with other mothers and to share the child care responsibilities. Neighborhood playmates and mothers who reciprocate in child care can give each other the "free time" they need.