Parents’ engagement with young children is central to children’s development and later social and economic outcomes, serving as a key channel for the intergenerational transmission of human capital. Many early childhood development (ECD) programmes aim to increase the quantity and quality of time that primary caregivers — typically mothers — spend with young children. Because better-educated parents invest more time in children’s learning (Guryan et al. 2008; Kalil et al. 2012), programmes often aim to reduce socioeconomic disparities by targeting families with lower levels of education to strengthen their caregiving abilities.
Understanding how parents allocate time across work, childcare and domestic responsibilities is also a fundamental policy concern as unpaid care work is a recognised driver of gender inequality and a global indicator for tracking progress toward women’s empowerment. Without a clear understanding of how households with young children allocate time — who performs which care tasks and how those patterns vary by education — ECD initiatives risk unintentionally reinforcing existing inequities. Programme design would benefit from mapping how parents distribute their time, taking into account both parents’ education separately and, importantly, jointly.
The study used weekday time-use diaries from 663 mothers and fathers with pre-school children in northern Ghana – where poverty is high and access to formal schooling is limited (Ghana Ministry of Education and UNICEF 2020; Ghana Statistical Service 2017) to:
- describe and visualise how both mothers and fathers allocate time across home learning activities and caring for other household members
- examine how time-use patterns vary by formal education (which includes primary schooling) levels.