Who has time for early learning? Mothers, fathers and family time in northern Ghana

Parental engagement is central to children’s development and future opportunities. Many early childhood development programmes aim to increase the quantity and quality of time that primary caregivers — typically mothers — spend with young children. Ghana’s Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) policy  identifies responsive caregiving as one of six pillars of childhood development, calling for tools to help parents integrate early stimulation into daily routines.

But this assumes that parents can simply find more time in the day. In reality, many families already face significant time constraints. Evidence from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) shows that efforts to increase parental engagement often add to unpaid care responsibilities, which continue to fall disproportionately on mothers.

That is why understanding how families divide their time matters. Unpaid care work is a recognised driver of gender inequality,  yet a review of 263 early childhood development policies found that only 40 acknowledged this link. Without recognising existing time constraints, early childhood development programmes risk reinforcing existing gender inequality.

The Ghana study

Using 24-hour weekday time-use diaries from 663 mothers and fathers of preschool-aged children in northern Ghana, the study examined how parents divide their time across paid work, unpaid care and other daily activities. It also explored how time use differs depending on whether neither one or both parents had received formal education.

What did we learn?

One finding stood out immediately: mothers and fathers spent almost the same amount of time playing and learning with their preschool-aged children.

The biggest gender differences laid elsewhere. Mothers spent considerably more time caring for other household members and performing household tasks, while fathers spent more time in paid work, farming, and on personal care and leisure. Mothers devoted just over two hours a day to caring for other household members, compared with just over an hour for fathers. Fathers, meanwhile, spent about an hour more each day on personal care and leisure—which includes activities such as religious engagement, socializing outside of the home, and eating/drinking—than mothers.

The second striking finding concerned education. When only mothers had received formal education, their daily time use looked remarkably similar to that of mothers with no formal education. Differences emerged only when fathers had at least some formal education. In those households, both parents spent more time on unpaid care and less time sleeping. Looking more closely, the additional unpaid care was driven largely by caring for other household members, rather than household chores. Only when both parents had formal education did mothers spend more time on play and learning with their young children.

What does this mean for policymakers?

Early childhood development programmes should take families’ existing time constraints into account when encouraging parents to spend more time supporting their children’s learning. Interventions should build on existing daily routines and recognise how work and care responsibilities are shared within households.

Our findings also suggest that engaging fathers in children’s early learning is not simply a question of fairness—it may also benefit children’s development. Because how families allocate their time is more closely linked to fathers’ education and parents’ combined educational background than to mothers’ education alone, programmes that focus exclusively on mothers may therefore miss an important opportunity to support children’s development.

Finally, our study raises important questions for future research. How do patterns of time use affect parents’ well-being? How do seasonal livelihoods and changing work demands shape the time families have available for caregiving? Answering these questions could help design early childhood programmes that are both more effective for children and more realistic for families.

Read the working paper.

Read the policy brief.