Neighborhood Variation in Girls’ and Boys’ Time Use

Liana C. Sayer, Ohio State University
Rachel E. Dwyer, Ohio State University

Does the rhythm of children’s everyday lives - their activities and time use - vary in different community contexts and by gender and race/ethnicity? Neighborhood effects on children’s time use are often proposed to be a key mechanism in producing observed variability in children’s outcomes. We use data from the 2002 PSID-CDS to develop new, comprehensive measures of children’s time use and demonstrate that activity patterns vary across neighborhoods. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1973) theorizing of habitus and field, we propose that time use is a “generative schema” through which individuals express individual “tastes” and signify hierarchical social identities, both of which are internalized and given meaning within the disparate conditions of life experienced in early childhood. Our research provides the foundation for future work that explores how children’s time use is fundamental to [re]generative schemas of stratification.