Parental Beliefs, Engagement, and Time Investments in Preschoolers

Margherita Fort, Maria Bigoni, Stefania Bortolotti, Roberto Caputo, Annalisa Guarini, Daniela Iorio, Chiara Monfardini, Alessandra Sansavini and Chiara Suttora

No 21245, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper presents a novel app-based survey designed to elicit beliefs about the impact of parental time investments from parents of preschoolers that allows to differentiate the intrinsic value of the activity from the significance of parental engagement. The resulting parental belief indicators exhibit strong internal validity and consistency and correlate with engagement and the quality of daily parent-child interactions, as measured by 24-hour parental time diaries: a one standard-deviation increase in beliefs regarding the importance of engagement is associated with an additional 5 hours spent with the child, 6 hours of engaged time (about 30% in time-use standard deviations).

JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
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