Although previous research documents that having dinner together as a family positively relates to long-run child and family outcomes, one aspect of family dinner that has not been explored previously is the role that dinner timing may play in facilitating or hindering parental time investments in their children. We use time diary data for roughly 41,000 families from the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (2003–2019) to examine whether the timing of family dinner is correlated with differential parental time investments in children during the evening. We find that parents who start dinner as a family before the median time (6:15 p.m.) spend more quality time in the evening with their children, including more time reading and playing with their children. The relationship cannot be explained by observable family constraints, as it is stable regardless of parental labor force activity and the day of the week. Additionally, parents who eat dinner later do not reallocate quality time to other times of the day. These findings suggest that having dinner earlier may be an important mechanism facilitating parental time investments in children.

尽管以前的研究表明，在一起聚餐与家庭长远的发展有着积极的关系，但以前未曾探讨过的家庭聚餐的一个方面是，聚餐时机可能在促进或阻碍父母时间投资方面起着一定的作用。孩子们。我们使用全国代表性的美国时间使用状况调查（2003-2019年）中大约41,000个家庭的时间日志数据，来检查家庭晚餐的时间是否与傍晚儿童父母时间的不同投资有关。我们发现，在中位时间（下午6:15）之前开始家庭聚餐的父母在晚上与孩子一起度过的美好时光，包括更多的时间与孩子一起阅读和玩耍。这种关系不能通过明显的家庭约束来解释，因为无论父母的劳动力活动和星期几如何，它都是稳定的。此外，以后吃晚饭的父母不会将优质的时间分配给一天中的其他时间。这些发现表明，早晚餐可能是促进父母对孩子进行时间投入的重要机制。