With rising grocery prices and housing costs, “sustaining a family and providing a good life for kids” is challenging, says Riley E. Wilson (BA’13), a BYU economics professor. But as families try to make ends meet, parents, especially moms, work to pre- serve quality time with their kids. The adoption of optional full-day kindergarten across the country, including recently in Utah, “relaxes some of those constraints,” says Wilson.
In a study published by the Annenberg Institute, Wilson—alongside Jocelyn Wikle (BA’02), a BYU professor of family life, and Chloe Gibbs, a professor from the University of Notre Dame—analyzed information pulled from national databases to paint a picture of how full-day kindergarten is helping families.
The study found that without having to pick up their children from half-day kindergarten in the middle of the day, mothers have more time to pursue other responsibilities.
“As primary caretakers of kids in most households, moms are the ones that are flexible for their kids,” Wilson says. “When their kids are away at school, that frees up moms’ schedules.”
But what does the kindergartners’ extra time away at school mean for quality family time? When kids are at home, some of that time is spent with their parents, but the study found that much of that time might just be children playing on their own or using media while the parent attends to other needs. Mothers of full-day kindergartners show no difference in quality time with their children each day compared to mothers who enrolled their children in half-day kindergarten.
“It’s really those quality interactions that are important for relationship development,” says Wikle. “We found that parents of full-day kindergartners are not missing out on quality time with their kids. Parents are reading as much with their kids, and they’re playing as much with their kids.”
The researchers note that full-day kindergarten increases options. “Some families who don’t need it aren’t going to use it. And some families who will benefit from this can use it,” says Wikle.
