Guaranteed Income, Responsive Caregiving & Time Use

Background:

Access to flexible time is integral for caregiving that is responsive to need. This can also be understood as process time, which includes unpredictable rhythms such as responding to an infant on cue. These forms of caregiving are dynamic and conflict with structured clock time, which represent the dominant logic of the market economy. Developmental research indicates that responsive caregiving is integral to healthy child development. However, while parental aspirations are remarkably similar socio-demographically, low-income parents’ developmentally tailored efforts are routinely subverted. A growing body of scholars are experimenting with providing guaranteed income (GI), a no-strings attached cash transfer, as a mechanism for alleviating caregiver pressure. Thus far, strong links have been identified between GI and expansions in time for strengthening relationships and significant findings on investing in children’s enrichment. This research builds on this evidence by exploring GI’s possibility as a change mechanism for caregivers.

Methods:

This is a sub-strand of a mixed-methods RCT of GI and time use with 150 caregivers in NYC (N=55), Des Moines, Iowa (N= 40), and Los Angeles, CA (N=55). Data collection involved a HIPPA compliant app designed and beta-tested with two community groups matching the study population that synthesized time use logs with multi-modal qualitative data. The study relied on 3 rounds of compensated data collection that included a 45-minute semi-structured interview and an interactive time-log with voice memo and video prompts received through the app that they repeated weekly for 3 weeks on relationships, caregiving and finances. Saldaña’s (2021) holistic coding approach was utilized for its unique suitability for triangulating expression, meaning and emotion with multimodal data.

Results:

Narratives illustrated constant tensions between clock and process time that produced fragmented engagement with caregiving governed by economic precarity and unstable employment. Under these conditions caregiving was ensconced in a survival mode that undermined opportunities for responsive caregiving. After GI receipt, a process of meaningful temporal reorientation to parenting developed as caregivers shifted from reactive clock-time approaches toward more intentional and process-centered ways of being. Caregivers described reduced reliance on second and third jobs, increased attendance at children's extracurricular activities, more time for breastfeeding and a greater capacity for presence. By round 3, caregivers started redistributing acts of care towards themselves in small, but meaningful ways. Before GI, caregivers routinely deprioritized their own health, education, rest and relationships, but with it many redirected time toward personal goals, preventative healthcare, and on-going mental health care.

Implications:

These findings suggest that economic security functions as a structural determinant of caregiving and health practices, with GI enabling a fundamental reorientation from scarcity-driven survival-mode to intentional, relational caregiving. A non-trivial amount of funding is invested in attempts at altering parenting milieus through logic models that presume lack of knowledge or insufficient commitment towards child development. However, as these findings illustrate, scarcity driven pathways refract the desires of caregivers through the erosion of process time. This highlights the potential for GI as a mechanism for influencing well-being trajectories by investing in the caregivers rather than parenting programs.