Average time spent caring for household children, 2005–2009

For the combined years from 2005 to 2009, adults living in households with children under 6 spent an average of 2.0 hours per day providing primary childcare—childcare done as a main activity, such as physical care of children and reading to or talking with children—to household children.

[Chart data]

For the combined years from 2005 to 2009, adults living in households where the youngest child was between the ages of 6 and 17 spent less than half as much time providing primary childcare to household children—47 minutes per day.

Among adults living in households with children under 6, for the combined years from 2005 to 2009, women spent an average of 1.1 hours per day providing physical care (such as bathing or feeding a child) to household children; by contrast, men spent 0.5 hour providing physical care.

These data are from the American Time Use Survey. To learn more, see "American Time Use Survey — 2009 Results" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-10-0855.