The time teens spend with their dads may have critical benefits, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania.
The more time spent alone with their fathers, the higher their self-esteem; the more time with their dads in a group setting, the better their social skills.
Researchers studied families with at least two children over a period of seven years.
The researchers caution that the study was not representative of the whole country. The families studied are almost exclusively European American, working- and middle-class families living in small cities, towns, and rural communities.
Further studies are needed to look at more diverse samples of the U.S. population, they say.
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The study, published in the journal Child Development, found that kids spend less and less time with their parents in group settings as they go through their preteen and teenage years. But one-on-one time increases up until about age 12 and then stays relatively flat before starting to decline a bit around age 15, says Crouter.
Parents spend roughly seven to eight hours a week in group settings with their kids ages 8 to 15, the study found. Mothers get in about an hour and 15 minutes alone with their firstborn kids and more than an hour and a half with second-born kids each week. Dads get in just over an hour of one-on-one time with first- and second-born kids each week.
