Time Spent with Children

I would like to create a variable that shows how much time each parent spends with the child. I understand that only the randomly chosen respondent answers the questions about time use. Does the respondent reports only her/his time use or also time use of other household members? For instance if the mother is the chosen respondent, is there a way to get the time use of the father provided there is a father in the household?

Time use information is only collected for a single respondent in the household, although other information (e.g. age, sex, relationship to the sampled individual) about all household members is available.

The ATUS does collect detailed information on who the respondent was with during each activity, for most types of activity. Detailed information on this is available using hierarchical extracts, which include WHO records, which can be linked to ACTIVITY records. More information on using these records can be found here and here. If using a rectangular data format, you can create your own time use variables, including only time spent with children, with parents, with spouse, etc. The links above also have information on this.

So if the mother is the respondent in the family, is there a way to see how much time the father is spending with the child using WHO records? I don’t see how it can be done because the WHO records only identify with whom the respondent is spending the time.

No, that is not possible with the ATUS data.