For working parents, spending more time with kids does not always mean finding hours of extra free time. It can mean deliberately building family moments around the realities of work, school and other responsibilities.
For parents who travel for work, creating a predictable schedule can help. Atticus Family Law recommends anchoring parenting time around non-travel weeks, using longer blocks when appropriate and building plans around school and extracurricular schedules.
Communication matters when work regularly pulls a parent away from home. The firm recommends maintaining consistent parent-child contact during trips through phone calls or video chats, noting that “Children benefit enormously from consistent contact with both parents.”
What the Research Says About Working Parents
Research shows that working parents can spend substantial amounts of time with their children, but the timing and structure of their work can make a difference. A study using U.S. time-use data found working mothers spent an average of about 214 minutes with children under 13 on a workday, compared with about 163 minutes for working fathers.
The study included 237 working mothers and 294 working fathers with children under 13. Among mothers, working from home was associated with almost 50 additional minutes with children on a diary day, while fathers with variable schedules spent about 40 fewer minutes with their children.
The researchers caution that the data came from older work-schedule information and was observational, meaning it cannot establish that a particular schedule directly caused the differences. Still, the findings suggest that predictable schedules and control over when and where work happens can matter for family time.
Avoiding Burnout While Making Time for Kids
Finding more family time should not mean adding another exhausting obligation to an already packed schedule. A 2025 study of 1,285 working parents found that 65% reported burnout, highlighting how demanding the combination of employment and parenthood can be.
Parents can start by identifying which commitments genuinely need their time and which can be delegated, shortened or dropped. Protecting predictable family periods can also make connection feel more achievable than constantly trying to squeeze it into leftover time.
Recognizing burnout early is important, too. The researchers found parental burnout was associated with several parent and child mental-health factors and with a greater risk of child maltreatment, making support and intervention important rather than treating exhaustion as simply part of being a working parent.
