Mothers’ Time With Infant and Time in Employment as Predictors of Mother – Child Relationships and Children’s Early Development Aletha C. Huston and Stacey Rosenkrantz Aronson University of Texas at Austin This study tested predictions from economic and developmental theories that maternal time with an infant is important for mother – child relationships and children’s development, using time-use diaries for mothers of 7- to 8-month-old infants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N 5 1,053). Employment reduced time with infants, but mothers compensated for some work time by decreasing time in other activities. With family and maternal characteristics controlled, time with infants predicted high Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores and maternal sensi- tivity, but bore little relation to children’s engagement with mothers, secure attachment, social behavior, or cognitive performance from 15 to 36 months. Mothers who spent more time at work had higher HOME scores. Maternal time with infants may reflect maternal characteristics that affect both time allocation and maternal behavior. Mothers’ time with their infants and young children is a central construct in both economic and devel- opmental theories of family influences on children’s development. Economic theories (e.g., Becker, 1981; Coleman, 1988) assume that time is a resource or commodity that parents invest in their children. Time with children provides social capital that cre- ates human capital for at least two reasons. First, one element of social capital is trustworthiness of a social context, which a consistent, available caregiver may provide. Second, time is a prerequisite for parents to provide intellectual stimulation and social interac- tions for their children. According to Coleman (1988), social capital in the family requires both time and attention to the child during that time. Economic theories of the family are generally discussed in re- lation to the development of older children, but they can also be applied to very young children. Developmental hypotheses about the effects of maternal time with their infants are drawn from theories of attachment and early social and cognitive stimulation (Belsky, 2001; Brazelton, 1986; Sroufe, 1988; Vaughn, Gove, & Egeland, 1980). According to attachment theory, the infant forms a working model of secure social relationships on the basis of experi- ence with a sensitive, responsive, and predictable attachment figure, usually the mother. Extended hours of separation may disrupt this process because mothers have fewer opportunities to learn their in- fants’ signals and to develop appropriate reciprocal interactions, and infants may experience their mothers’ presence as sporadic and unpredictable. Few investigations have measured time directly in relation to attachment. In one study of a small sam- ple, mothers’ reports of time with their infant at 3 months of age were positively related to attachment security at 1 year (Cox, Owen, Henderson, & Marg- and, 1992), but there were no differences in attach- ment security as a function of maternal time with their infants at 7 to 8 months in analyses with a larger sample by Booth, Clarke-Stewart, Vandell, McCart- ney, and Owen (2002). Mother – child time may also be a necessary if not sufficient condition for stimu- lation of cognitive activities, language, and positive social interactions. Maternal Employment as a Proxy for Time As the number of employed mothers with young children has risen dramatically over the last several decades, many have expressed concern that loss of maternal time will affect children’s development r 2005 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2005/7602-0011 We are grateful to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network for designing and carrying out the data collection, and to Young Chang for helpful comments on earlier drafts. This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (2V10 HD25430-11) to the University of Kansas with a subcontract to the University of Texas at Austin, and by funding from the University of Texas at Austin. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Aletha C. Huston, Department of Human Ecology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A2700, Austin, TX 78712- 0141. Electronic mail may be sent to achuston@mail.utexas.edu. Child Development, March/April 2005, Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 467 –482