PRB

There are only so many hours in a day. With work and caregiving responsibilities, are Americans meeting their basic needs for sleep and exercise?

In a study examining how U.S. adults use their time, Patrick Krueger at the University of Colorado-Denver and colleagues found that more time spent on work or child care does not directly translate into less time pursuing health-promoting behaviors.

Using data on married or cohabitating men and women ages 18 to 64 from the 2004–2017 waves of the nationally representative National Health Interview Survey, the researchers tested two perspectives on time allocation.

The time availability perspective suggests that time is a limited resource and that working and caregiving will necessarily take time away from sleep and exercise. The time deepening perspective suggests that, as time demands increase, individuals can squeeze extra activities into their day by multitasking, choosing activities that can be done quickly, and following tight schedules—so people might be able to fit in adequate sleep and exercise even when working long hours or taking care of children.

Increasing both sleep and physical activity are important because they can improve cardiovascular health, metabolic function, and survival, the researchers said. But just 54% of U.S. adults get the recommended 7+ hours of sleep each night, and 68% hit the exercise recommendations (at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity weekly).

Work Hours Cut Into Sleep but Have Less Impact on Physical Activity

In the study, women who worked more than 35 hours per week and men who worked more than 30 hours per week averaged less than 7 hours of sleep per day—a finding that supports the time availability perspective.

But work and physical activity followed a different pattern. Up to about 40 hours of work per week, additional work was associated with less physical activity—again, in line with the time availability view. But beyond 40 hours, the amount of physical activity began to plateau and then, for some groups, increased. This finding supports the time deepening perspective, suggesting that as men and women start working full time, they may rearrange their schedules in ways to support maintaining some level of physical activity.

Parents Get Less Sleep Than Nonparents but May Still Make Time for Exercise

The presence of a child of any age was associated with less sleep time than among comparable men and women without children, supporting the time availability perspective, the researchers found. Unsurprisingly, parents of children ages two or younger got the least amount of sleep on average, while parents of older children lost less sleep.

Having a child (of any age) was not linked to less moderate physical activity, however, which supports the time deepening perspective. Similarly, having a child ages 3 or older (for men) or 6 or older (for women) was not associated with less vigorous physical activity.

In contrast, having younger children—ages 2 or younger for men and ages 5 or younger for women—was linked to less time spent on vigorous exercise—again, supporting time availability.

Among Parents With Young Children, Women Get Less Exercise Than Men

Although both men and women in the United States work longer hours than adults in most countries, women in the U.S. spend more time doing time-sensitive household tasks than men do, including caring for young children, cooking meals, and doing chores like laundry. On the other hand, men’s household tasks tend to be more flexible and intermittent or less time-sensitive, such as playing with older children, mowing the lawn, and home repairs.

Given the differences in roles, the researchers predicted that the data would support the time availability perspective more often for women than for men. Nevertheless, they found just one gender difference in their results: Women, but not men, engage in fewer hours of vigorous physical activity if they have a child ages 3 to 5.

Policy Implications

The results of this study show what many parents may know: keeping up on sleep is challenging, and, unlike exercise, can’t be squeezed into free moments in an already-busy schedule. Recommended physical activity can more easily fit into weekends and lunch breaks or happen while caring for children.

The researchers point to several policies that may provide dual benefits, helping parents get more sleep and exercise:

• Extend parental leave
• Limit long work hours
• Increase vacation time
• Support funding for day care and early childhood education

Although some of these policies may be controversial, the researchers argue that these efforts “could increase the time that employees and parents spend sleeping and that parents of young children spend in vigorous activity.”