Parent–child leisure activities and cultural capital in the United Kingdom: The gendered effects of education and social class

• Education is positively associated with mothers’ cultural activities with children.
• Social class is negatively associated with mothers’ TV time with children.
• Fathers’ social position is weakly associated with their leisure time with children.
• Father’s leisure time with children is affected by the mother’s social position.
• Education and social class have different effects on parent–child shared leisure.

This article uses data on couples from the 2000 UK Time Use Survey (N = 610) to analyze how social position influences parents’ leisure activities with children. The study is the first using representative data to investigate this fundamental question to understand social inequalities in family life and children's life chances. Results reveal that social position intersects with gender in influencing parent–child leisure activities with implications on children’s cultural capital. Three are the main findings: (1) social position has significant positive effects on cultural activities with children and negative on parent–child television watching among mothers, but moderate differences are observed for fathers; (2) father–child leisure is strongly influenced by the spouse’s social position, but not mother–child leisure; (3) education and social class show complex differences in affecting parent–child leisure, suggesting that future studies should include these two variables when analyzing parent–child time and family life.