Journal of Family Issues Volume 30 Number 11 November 2009 1459-1485 © 2009 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0192513X09336647 http://jfi.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com 1459 Authors’ Note: Please address all correspondence regarding this article to Constance T. Gager, Department of Family & Child Studies, 4144 University Hall, One Normal Ave., Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07403; e-mail: gagerc@mail.montclair.edu Whose Time Is It? The Effect of Employment and Work/Family Stress on Children’s Housework Constance T. Gager Montclair State University Laura A. Sanchez Alfred Demaris Bowling Green State University Children’s time use—and specifically the time they spend on household chores—is an important arena for understanding social change. However, few studies accurately depict the multiple factors influencing children’s household labor, including parent’s and children’s available time and parent’s levels of work/family stress. We address these gaps by exploring how parents’ and children’s time use and perceived stress constrains time for housework. We employ data on 3,560 households from a national survey of children’s time use. We find several factors elevate children’s housework hours, includ- ing parents’ work/family stress, fathers’ work hours, having more siblings, being female, and being an older child. Contrary to the time availability prin- ciple, children’s curricular and extracurricular activities and hours spent in paid labor are associated with more housework. A follow-up analysis sug- gests that this is not accounted for by an unmeasured family attribute promot- ing children’s achievement across multiple spheres of activity. Keywords: housework; children; time use; work/family stress C hildren’s time use in general, and the time they spend on household chores more specifically, is an important arena for understanding social change. The media is replete with stories of working moms who are struggling to do it all and of their overscheduled children training to follow in their footsteps. A recent article in The New York Times describes working