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This article discusses the importance of time use studies in measuring unpaid care work, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the need for improved methodologies and theoretical approaches to accurately assess and measure care responsibilities. The article also addresses critiques of time use studies, such as the challenges of measuring overlapping activities and the multiple meanings of time in different contexts. The special issue includes papers that explore various aspects of time, temporality, and care, offering new insights and recommendations for future research. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper I analyse the processes of vulnerabilisation related to unemployment, based on the case of Spain in the period 2010–2020. I conceptualise unemployment time as empty time that unemployed people attempt to fill using temporal tactics. To explain the degree of temporal agency of the unemployed, I shall analyse their tactics according to four social conditions: previous work socialisation, duration of unemployment, domestic relationship and social class. In terms of method, this study was based on quantitative time data obtained from the most recent Time Use Survey for Spain (from 2009 to 2010), and on qualitative time use data obtained from eight discussion groups and 49 interviews with unemployed people. Drawing on these data, I analyse relationships between temporal tactics in unemployment, the social conditions of the subjects and their processes of vulnerability, and define five temporal tactics, which I term: the investing time tactic, the domestic hyperactivity tactic, the domestic work rejection tactic, the constant effort tactic and the non-tactic. I conclude by demonstrating that these tactics can be sequenced as stages in a process of vulnerability associated with gradual desynchronisation from pre-unemployment times, underlining the importance of socio-temporal categories and conditions in understanding vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how coupled adults arrange food-related labor in relation to their daily time allocation is of great importance because different arrangements may have implications for diet-related health and gender equity. Studies from the time-use perspective argue that daily activities such as work, caregiving, and non-food-related housework can potentially compete for time with foodwork. However, studies in this regard are mostly centered on individual-level analyses. They fail to consider cohabiting partners' time spent on foodwork and non-food-related activities, a factor that could be helpful in explaining how coupled partners decide to allocate time to food activities. Using 108 daily time-use logs from seventeen opposite-gender couples living in Toronto, Canada, this paper examines how male and female partners' time spent on non-food-related activities impact the total amount of time spent on foodwork by coupled adults and the difference in time spent on foodwork between coupled women and men. Results show that both male and female partners took a higher portion of foodwork when their partner worked longer. When men worked for additional time, the couple-level duration of foodwork decreased. Without a significant impact on the gender difference in foodwork duration, women's increased caregiving duration was associated with a reduction of total time spent on foodwork by couples. An increase in caregiving and non-food-related chores by men was associated with an increased difference in duration of foodwork between women and men, which helped secure a constant total amount of foodwork at the couple level. These behavioral variations between men and women demonstrate the gender differences in one's responsiveness to the change of partners' non-food-related tasks. The associations found among non-food-related activities and foodwork are suggestive of a need to account for partners' time allocation when studying the time-use dynamics of foodwork and other daily activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family scholars examining time spent on children's care focus heavily on mothers' allocations to a specific sphere of active caregiving activities. But children's needs for care and supervision involve connection to others; and many others beyond mothers can and do provide care, especially as children grow. Using a "linked lives" approach that centers relationality, we show how time diaries can illuminate children's time spent in "socially connected" care. Using recent (2014–2019) time diary data from the American and the United Kingdom Time Use Surveys, we examine mothers', children's, and teenagers' days to assess two forms of connected care time. First, results show that in addition to childcare time as traditionally measured by time use studies, mothers spend considerable further time providing connected care through social and community time in which children are included, religious activities with their children present, and mealtime with children. Second, looking from the child's perspective also underscores time in the larger "village" of carers within which children and youth are embedded. Fully two-thirds of 8–14-year-olds' and three-quarters of 15–17-year-olds' waking time is not with mothers—it is spent alone or in social connection to fathers, extended family, teachers, neighbors, and friends. A "linked lives" approach shifts attention to assessing care time in diverse activities with others and to measuring mothers' and children's time in social connections within the larger world. This analytic frame also moves away from maternal determinism to highlight the contours of children's care and social time occurring within the community at large, as well as the roles and responsibilities of those outside of the mother–child dyad across the child's early life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past half century, time-use studies have become a leading method for researching unpaid care work, especially in the multidisciplinary field of gender divisions of household work and care and in feminist international studies on counting and accounting for women's unpaid work. Although attention to conceptual and methodological refinements in time-use methods is increasing, more focus on the challenges of conceptualizing and measuring care responsibilities, the limitations of measuring relational care practices with clock time, the existence of other kinds of time, and the epistemological and ontological moorings of time-use studies is needed. Two research programs inform this article: qualitative and longitudinal research with Canadian households in which parents were challenging norms, practices, and ideologies of male breadwinning and female caregiving; and the development of a feminist ecological ethico-onto-epistemological approach to knowledge making. A case study from the first program and several pivotal ideas drawn from the second—about relational ontologies, multiple ontologies, and the ethico-political dimensions of knowledge making—support three key arguments advanced in this article. First, I argue for a deeper interrogation of methodological and epistemological matters in coding, classifying, and categorizing care tasks in time-use studies. Second, I maintain that care responsibilities exist as "process time"; they can be narrated, but they cannot be measured in fixed units of clock time. Third, I maintain that it is not only possible, but politically and conceptually important for researchers to look beyond clock time, to recognize the ontological multiplicity of time, including relational and non-linear time and to embrace and use different kinds of time. This article is part of a growing call to reimagine how we think about, conceptualize, measure, and make knowledges about time, time use, and care-time intra-actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can parental childcare be described as productive work? If so, is this work reducible to the specific physical activities designated in most time use surveys, or does it include more diffuse responsibilities for supervision, socialization, and management? These questions invite attention to debates over the meaning of work itself, which have been shaped not only by gender and academic discipline, but also by empirical results of diary-based time use surveys. Recent quantitative research strongly suggests that neither the temporal demands, nor the economic contributions of parental childcare are fully captured by conventional measurement of specific childcare activities. The numbers themselves urge us to look beyond the clock to carefully consider how time use categories are conceptualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article presents a three-stage approach to teaching time in an applied psychology setting. The approach focuses on nurturing temporal reflexivity by having students reflect on their time-use and draw attention to their subjective experiences of time. Activities, discussions, and practical demonstrations are used to guide students through personal, collective, theoretical, and practical lenses of engaging with time. This case sample is taught to postgraduate students and practitioners in coaching psychology and positive psychology. Teaching within this context is discussed, along with the pedagogical practices employed to create a reflective and interactive learning environment. One primary activity, a reflective time journal, is presented as a tool for other educators to consider in their teaching of temporal reflexivity. Further consideration is given to the general challenges of teaching time, including limited temporal resources, and acknowledgements of disciplinary, pedagogical, and personal positionalities. This case sample of teaching time may be of particular interest (1) for those looking to facilitate awareness of subjective experiences of time within the classroom (something we might refer to as temporal reflexivity), and (2) for those who teach in an applied setting where students are often practitioners or future practitioners looking for strategies that will practically inform their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time management applications aim to coordinate and tame the rhythms of social reality. It transpires, however, that in many cases, they somewhat complicate and impede this process, leading to time paradoxes. Using various theoretical tools developed in the critical studies of time and the critique of neoliberalism, I identify three time paradoxes produced by the applications: remembering to remember, planning to plan, and accelerating acceleration. These three paradoxes were brought up and thoroughly discussed in in-depth interviews with self-selected individuals who constantly face challenges related to personal time management. I highlight how managing time using various applications shapes the experience and meaning of time, makes individuals reorganize their social practices, redefines their memory, and influences their emotions. In conclusion, I reflect on how the tension between linear time and multi-temporality is intertwined with the discussed paradoxes and counter-productivity of time management applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]