Parent and child walking
State of the Economy

How did Gen X and Millennial parents manage their time?

Joshua Kendall and Ryan Nunn
June 25, 2026
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Key Takeaways

  1. The average younger Millennial spends less time on childcare than the average older Millennial did at the same age, but that difference is due to reduced fertility

  2. Millennial parents of young children, both men and women, are spending more time on childcare than did earlier generations

  3. Millennial fathers are spending somewhat less time on paid work than Gen X fathers did

  4. Partnered mothers spend more time on childcare, and less time on paid work, than fathers or single mothers

  5. Time spent on childcare drops quickly as children age, particularly for partnered parents

Headlines from employer surveys, like the U.S. jobs report that will be released next week, say a lot: how many people are working, what workers are paid, and what industries they work in, for example. But those surveys don’t tell us how workers spend their time, and in particular how working parents balance leisure, childcare, and work obligations. To answer those questions, we need surveys of individuals and detailed accounting of the time they spend on different activities. 

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released 2025 data from its American Time Use Survey (ATUS)—a key statistical resource that tells us what people do over the course of their days. The ATUS has been conducted for more than 20 years, allowing researchers to see how different generations have used their time. 

The Budget Lab is interested in these questions, and in time-use data generally, because of the important policy discussions around early childhood education and care and paid family leave. To understand the economic context for proposed policy changes in those areas, it is helpful to know how parents spend their time. 

First, we take an introductory look at how parents spent their time on childcare in 2025.1 Even after getting help from others (paid or unpaid), parents of the youngest children spend nearly 2.1 hours per day (averaged across the seven-day week) on childcare, not counting childcare time that counts as a secondary activity incidental to work or leisure.2 

Figure 1 breaks this time down by activities like play and reading, showing how parents of the youngest children generally spend more time on each. Mothers spend more time on childcare than fathers. When a child under 6 is present, mothers spend 2.5 hours a day caring for children in their household, as compared to 1.7 hours for fathers. But both of these averages are higher than for parents of older children. When the youngest child is between 6 and 12, mothers spend 1.5 hours and fathers spend 0.6 hours on childcare. 

That pattern of time use is different than among parents a generation ago. Millennial fathers and mothers of young children spend more time on childcare than their Gen X predecessors. For Millennial fathers, this increase is accompanied by a decrease in time spent on paid work; for Millennial mothers, work is roughly unchanged but leisure is diminished. 

Looking across recent generations, partnership and parental status are associated with widely varying time use. Partnered mothers spend much more time on childcare and less time on work than other groups. Partnered men, whether fathers of young children or not, spend similar amounts of time on work.

How Millennials have departed from Gen-X patterns

In the analysis below, we examine ATUS microdata that is available from 2003 to 2024. During this time period, only Millennials and Gen Xers can be observed for large portions of the 18-to-55-year-old age range, and we consequently focus on those generations.3 To start, we take the widest possible view, looking at entire generations and including both parents and non-parents.

Younger Millennials (born between 1989 and 1996) report spending less time on childcare in their 20s than older Millennials (born between 1981 and 1988). Figure 2 shows that time spent on childcare—including parents and non-parents alike—is the lowest for the most recent generation in our data.4

Crucially, this reduction in average time spent on childcare is driven by reduced childbearing rather than reduced childcare among parents. In fact, young Millennial parents (of children under 13) are spending more time on childcare than older Millennial parents, who in turn spent more time than younger (1973–1980) and older (1965–1972) Gen X parents. Figure 3 shows that this is generally true for both fathers and mothers. For mothers, the extra time spent on childcare was balanced by a reduction in leisure, shown in Appendix Figure 1.

Even as childcare time for parents has risen, time spent working (apart from childcare) may have moved in different directions for mothers and fathers, as shown in Figure 4. Millennial mothers spend about the same time working as their predecessors, while Millennial fathers appear to be spending somewhat less time working. 

A different way to see these patterns is provided in Figure 5. With age of youngest child on the horizontal axis, rather than age of parent, two findings are especially striking. First, Millennial fathers of the youngest children are working somewhat less than their Gen X counterparts did when their youngest child was the same age. Second, mothers of very young children (Millennials and Gen X alike) reduce their work time more than fathers. That is, time spent working rises quickly with child age for mothers, but only slightly for fathers—consistent with mothers being more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for young children. 

How marriage and cohabitation structure time use

For many families, marriage or unmarried cohabitation are important for structuring childcare and work responsibilities, and it is often valuable to disaggregate analysis on this dimension. Below we distinguish single and partnered (married or cohabiting) individuals who do or do not have at least one child under the age of 13 living with them. Because sample sizes can quickly become too small for accurate analysis, we pool the entire 2003–2024 sample rather than splitting out Gen X and Millennial generations.

In Figure 6, we show childcare time for each household type.5 Married fathers and (especially) mothers spend the most time providing childcare. Married mothers spend more time on childcare than their single counterparts. Here and elsewhere in this analysis, we focus on the primary recorded activity, which can exclude time in which a parent simultaneously works and provides childcare, for example. 

Conversely, partnered women with young children spend less time than other groups on paid work. Partnered men, with or without young children, spend the most time on paid work, as shown in Figure 7. 

As one might expect, partnered mothers and fathers of young children spend the least amount of time on leisure. By contrast, single men without young children spend the most: about 30 minutes or more than other groups of men at every age, as shown in Appendix Figure 2.

The intense (but brief) burden of caring for young children

Many parents could confirm that the earliest years of a child’s life often pose the most difficult challenges. Figure 8 shows that childcare time recorded in the ATUS is on average much higher in the earliest years than in later years of a child’s life. Mothers spend nearly twice as much time on childcare (nearly four hours a day) as fathers (under 2 hours a day) when they have a child under the age of 1. By the time the youngest child is 13 or older, time spent falls to about 30 minutes a day or less for mothers and fathers. 

The pattern is somewhat different depending on the type of household. Partnered mothers report spending more time on childcare than their single counterparts. The same is true for partnered fathers of infants. This could be attributable to single parents having less flexibility to substitute time away from work and towards childcare, especially in the earliest years of childrearing.

The economic context for childcare and paid leave policies

Policies related to childcare and paid leave have costs and benefits that The Budget Lab and others have analyzed in detail. In considering those economic effects, it is important to keep in mind the economic context for families with young children. In addition to the financial burden faced by those families, the analysis above highlights how time use is different for parents than non-parents. Especially for families with the youngest children, demands on parents’ time are high. 

Recent generations of parents have also spent their time differently, on average, than prior generations. Understanding this shifting context is made easier with consistent, high-quality surveys like the ATUS that give us insight into household decisionmaking. 

The authors are grateful to Lauren Bauer for insightful feedback on an earlier draft.

Appendix

This analysis covers the activities of ATUS respondents, not those of other members of the respondents’ households. The weights used in this analysis are constructed by IPUMS accordingly. 

Some figures distinguish households by the presence of “own children <13.” In ATUS, a household child is considered the respondent’s “own child” if they are their biological child, adopted child, or stepchild. A child could be present in the household and not fall into this category (e.g., the child of the respondent’s partner to whom they are not married). Such a child would not be counted as an “own child,” even if they are part of the childcare duties of a respondent. 

For simplicity, this analysis covers only primary activities, not secondary activities. This is particularly significant with regard to time spent on childcare, which can be a secondary activity. A respondent can spend time on childcare while engaging in a primary activity; for example, a respondent could say they spent 30 minutes watching television (the primary activity) while keeping an eye on their child (secondary activity). In this case, the analysis would record the time spent watching television as leisure only.

The generational cohorts have some exclusion criteria to prevent extreme values at the tails. An age range for a given cohort is included only if more than half of the possible ages are present in a year’s sample. For cells in which a majority of the generation is not visible in the data—e.g., younger Gen Xers at ages 22 to 25—we do not show estimated values. This is implemented in terms of single-year birth-by-age combinations; a majority of the potential combinations must be observable in our 2003–2024 microdata. For example, if in a given year, younger Gen Xers are only represented by people born in 1977 and 1978, then younger Gen Xers would be excluded for that year, as the sample would not be representative of the generation as a whole.

Footnotes

  • 1

    Note that this and other estimates we report from the ATUS exclude childcare time that families pay for others to provide, such as at a center or family-based daycare.

  • 2

    The sample in Figure 1 and subsequent figures includes all parents whose children are in the relevant age range, regardless of a parent’s employment status.  

  • 3

    For cells in which a majority of the generation is not visible in the data—e.g., younger Gen Xers at ages 22 to 25—we do not show estimated values. This is implemented in terms of single-year birth-by-age combinations; a majority of the potential combinations must be observable in our 2003–2024 microdata.

  • 4

    Here and elsewhere in the analysis, we drop observations for 2020 from our sample. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 time use patterns were unusual and data collection issues were significant.

  • 5

    Marriage or cohabitation, as opposed to unpartnered status, is the first distinguishing factor for household type. The presence of at least one child under 13 of either the respondent or the respondent’s partner is the second distinguishing factor.