leisure time may be spent in socially isolated settings, such as watching television at
home, rather than spent with other adults in settings outside the home (Bittman 2002).
Because social isolation has both mental and physical health effects, a fuller
understanding of the possibility of isolation for this group of women is warranted.
Additionally, the scheduling of leisure activities will be examined. Evidence from one
qualitative study suggests that the leisure time of single mothers may be more harried and
more often combined with unpaid work than that other mothers (Hodgson, Dienhart &
Daly 2001). Because longer, uninterrupted spells of leisure are considered optimal in the
time use literature, how leisure is experienced across the day is also of importance when
considering how individuals experience free time. Statistical analysis using nationally
representative time diary data will be combined with in-depth, semi-structured interviews
in order to garner a fuller understanding of the underlying processes guiding individuals’
categorization of their own time. I also expect these interviews to allow for a more robust
theorization of how the context of activities matters in the study of time allocation.
Though the time poverty thesis (see Vickery 1977) has remained essentially
untested, findings from several studies suggest that single mothers allocate more of their
time to leisure than do married mothers, or that leisure time allocations can be more fully
explained by employment and education rather than familial status (Bittman 2002; Sanik
& Mauldin 1986; Sayer, Passias & Casper 2006). This seems to directly contradict the
time poverty thesis. However, adding additional family members may present a larger
constraint on leisure time than does having only one adult to manage all household work.
Though the picture may initially appear rosy for single mothers in terms of the
quantity of free time they are able to access, the question of the quality of that time
remains. Though married mothers are often largely responsible for the organization of
Convention