Time use as a cause and consequence of youth development
Open Access
- Author:
- Lam, Chun Bun
- Graduate Program:
- Human Development and Family Studies
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 16, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Susan Marie Mc Hale, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Susan Marie Mc Hale, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Michael J Rovine, Committee Member
Eva Sharon Lefkowitz, Committee Member
Alan Booth, Special Member - Keywords:
- Time use
adolescence
adjustment
social context
family socialization - Abstract:
- Using multilevel modeling to take advantage of long-term, longitudinal data collected from two siblings and two parents from each of about 200 families, the three studies in this dissertation examined the developmental course and adjustment and family correlates of youths’ time with parents, time with peers, and time spent on leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) from middle childhood through adolescence. Study 1 focused on parent-child social (parent, child, and others present) and dyadic (only parent and child present) time. The results showed that social time with parents declined across adolescence, but dyadic time with mothers and fathers peaked in early and middle adolescence, respectively. Moreover, secondborns’ social time with parents declined more slowly than firstborns’, and gendered time use patterns were more pronounced in boys and in opposite-sex sibling dyads. Additionally, youths who spent more dyadic time with their fathers, on average, had higher general self-worth, and changes in social time with fathers were positively linked to changes in youths’ social competence. Study 2 focused on time with opposite- and same-sex peers. The results indicated that girls’ and boys’ time with opposite-sex peers increased beginning in middle childhood and early adolescence, respectively, and that youths’ time with same-sex peers peaked in mid-adolescence. Moreover, changes in unsupervised (no adults present) time with opposite-sex peers positively predicted changes in youths’ problem behaviors and depressive symptoms by the following year, and changes in supervised (adults present) time with opposite-sex peers positively predicted changes in youths’ school performance by the following year. Study 3 focused on time spent on LTPA (e.g., sports, water activities, hiking and camping). The results suggested that LTPA increased during middle childhood and declined across adolescence, and this decline was more pronounced for girls than for boys. Moreover, on occasions when mothers and fathers spent proportionally more time on LTPA with youths than usual, youths also spent more total time on LTPA than usual. Taken together, these studies highlight the importance of contextualizing the study of youth development and alert interventionists about the role of both mothers and fathers in promoting youth exercise participation and physical health.