The Impact Of Maternal Personality On Parental Time Investments

Parental investment is the hot issue that always concerned by society and families.However,compared with monetary investments,there are relatively few researches related to time-intensive parental investments.Using 2018 China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)data contained the 15-item Big Five Inventory(BFI-S),we analyze the impacts of maternal personality on parental time investments.We use three dependent variables(the monthly communication frequency,whether mother helps with homework and weekly tutor hours)to measure maternal time investments.Due to the differences of samples,we analyze the urban and rural samples respectively in this paper.Personal characteristics of mother,personal characteristics of father,personal characteristics of child and family background variables are added in the estimates step by step during the analysis,and we analyze results of control variables in this paper as well.According to the characteristics of three dependent variables,we use the Poisson regression,Negative binomial regression,Probit model and Tobit model as complements of simple OLS estimates.Results show that part of the ‘Big Five’ personality traits of mother do have some influences on maternal time investments,and part of the results show considerable differences between the urban and rural.Mothers high in conscientiousness tend to tutor their child longer time in the rural sample.In the urban sample,mothers high in extraversion communicate more frequently with child and mothers high in openness are more likely to help their child with homework.Differences between the results of OLS estimates and other models are small.In addition,we find grandparents’ involvement in housework can reduce the tutor time of mother significantly in the urban sample,which may relate to higher education level of urban grandparents,and grandparents who help with the housework are also likely to help the child with homework.Also,it is more convenient to take a training class or hire a private tutor for the child in the urban which have rich educational resources if grandparents help with the housework.