All things it devours

How giving kids independence frees up parents' precious time and makes parent-child experiences more meaningful

Time poverty is a nasty little term coined around the turn of the 20^th century that refers to the “chronic imbalance between the time a person requires and that which their work life allows them.” Household responsibilities and caring for young or aging family members also contribute to time poverty, leaving Americans with little time of their own.

Alan B. Krueger, Princeton University professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama, called time “currency of life.”

In the Economist, journalist Tony Silva explained that until the late 1970’s, measuring work output was relatively straightforward. In farming, manufacturing, or construction, it’s work in, product out. Today, three-quarters of working Americans belong to the knowledge-based workforce, where outputs are less clear.

As a result, Silva found, “the time people spend at their desks is often seen as a sign of productivity and loyalty.”

Today a quarter of Americans work at least partly from home, so it’s not just about being seen at their desks. It’s really the amount of time spent engaged with work—responding to emails, chatting on Slack, answering texts, jiggling the computer mouse—regardless of typical work hours.

Whether working from home or an office, no demographic is more pressed for time than the working parent. But there is help on the horizon.

Bonus points if you got the reference in the title! Time is the answer to the last riddle Gollum gives Bilbo Baggins. And yes, that is a limited-edition gold leather bound 50th anniversary version of The Hobbit.

Time-impoverished working parents

Time poverty hits working parents especially hard because the day-to-day obligations of parenting have skyrocketed. At every age and every stage of their kids’ lives, parents are obliged to do more for their kids than their parents did for them.

Today, for example, the majority of school children are dropped off in private vehicles. Fewer than 9% of American kids walk themselves to school, the school bus system is underfunded and understaffed, and at least a third of parents miss work as a result.

Outside of school, parents partake in an extracurricular rat race. It takes time to find, register, and budget for activities, it takes more time to transport kids to activities, and many activities expect parents to remain at the activity. Comic Marcello Hernandez has a great bit in his newest standup about the constant there-and-back of parenting.

Today’s parents must also manage kids’ leisure time. Without payphones or landlines, kids can’t arrange their own playdates, and even if they could, most parents will still drive them both ways. Just 33% of parents with kids aged 9 – 11 say they’d let them walk or bike to a friend’s house on their own.

American parents spend so much time in their cars, they think of them as an extension of home. A study from 2023 found that “drivers aged 35–49 spent more time (72.4 minutes) driving each day than any other age group.” It goes without saying that driving is poor for the environment, but it’s also tiring, stressful, and more dangerous than every other form of transportation. Statistically, kids are safer walking to school and friends’ houses than being driven by their parents.

Marcello Hernandez on Netflix talking about how his mother drove him to-and-from-and-to-and-from-and—-you get it.

Respect the hustle?

The dark side of time-impoverished parenting is the pernicious idea that constant busyness connotes success.

“To be pressed for time has become a sign of prosperity, an indicator of social status, and one that most people are inclined to claim,” said Silva.

Parents see their children’s failures and successes as reflective of their parenting. This isn’t new—many a parent throughout history has hung their head and wondered where they went wrong—but the sentiment is stronger now than it ever was.

To top it off, social media provides an unprecedented (if distorted) view into millions of people’s lives. Before social media, parents only had to keep up with their Joneses; today’s parents have to keep up with ALL the Joneses.

If parents equate busyness with success, it makes sense that they’d keep their kids busy as well. Time poverty is the new normal. Children today spend more time at school and supervised activities than any generation in history. Gen Z already spends less time in face-to-face interactions, or “hanging out” with friends than prior generations.

How deeply unfair. After all, many parents who deny their own children freedom spent much of their own childhood in good old unproductive, unsupervised play.

Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook, Lean In, etc.) is still close with her childhood girlfriends. These girls undoubtedly spent hours hanging out. Hanging out with girlfriends is as valuable as piano lessons!

Quality! Over! Quantity!

The real kicker is that most successful adults today weren’t crazy-busy time-impoverished children. Even parents raised by single moms or in difficult circumstances had more free play and freedom than today’s kids.

In fact, many wildly successful people had very independent childhoods. They walked themselves to school. They worked on farms, they futzed around, they read for hours, they played pickup games at the park. They got themselves into scrapes and got themselves out of them. “Figure it out for yourself,” was billionaire Mark Cuban’s mantra, thanks to the freedom his parents gave him.

And yet for all this busyness, research shows time and again that it’s the quality of time with parents that matters for elementary school-aged kids.

My dad commuted to work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and he was, and is, a wonderful dad. When he was with us, he was present. It wasn’t an obligation.

Childhood independence is an antidote to time poverty for working parents.

Giving kids independence makes parents’ lives easier by freeing parents from the kind of “quantity” time that eats up their days—with little discernable benefit to their kids.

What can parents do?

In a word, less.

The grumpy march to school. Doomscrolling at the park or ball field. Driving kids to-and-from and to-and-from. What can we prioritize? What can we relinquish to “quantity”?

In Seattle, a group of parents reticent to furnish their 9-year-olds with $700 iPhones started the Tin Can phone so kids can chat and make plans and have their own private conversations without giving them access to the Internet and all that comes with it.

Parenting isn’t a science. Quality time will look different for every family. Time poverty itself doesn’t affect everyone equally—for families struggling financially, time poverty may mean long work hours outside the home, and parents may need more time with their kids. But childhood independence is good for everyone. It allows parents to wrest back some control over the “currency of life,” and it helps kids take control of their own lives.