How Is Time Organised By and for Babies?

By and large, time studies have been carried out in the sociological area, converging in theoretical as much as methodological aspects when analysing time use by adults in contemporary western societies. However, research on time use by children is still incipient and until now the main topics addressed refer to daily socialisation experiences (Larson and Verma, 1999), the differences in time use considering social class and gender differences (Carvalho and Machado, 2006), childhood life in urban and rural areas (Christensen and James, 2008) and the comparison between activities developed over different decades (Cruz and Teixeira, 2008). It is important to emphasise that such research only considered children over 6. For this reason, the present undertaking seeks to understand time use by and for babies under 12 months old, and hence complete the gap found in studies based on this age range. Firstly an instrument to record daily time use was elaborated, for completion over 24 hours in observation of both baby and parent. This instrument was used twice - once on a weekday and the other on a weekend. Interviews were later carried out with the parents in order to further explore the information recorded. The sample comprised two babies - one girl and one boy and their respective parents. If on the one hand, babies receive recurrent external determinations leading us to understand time as an instrument of social regulation (Elias, 1998), despite such impositions they also determine their own time use on the other.