Leisure Quality among German Parents—Exploring Urbanity, Mobility, and Partner Interaction as Determinants

Individuals with family obligations concurrently perform unpaid tasks. In particular, parents often multitask childcare during leisure, leading to low-quality leisure. In this study, we explored leisure quality by measuring pure and contaminated (i.e., leisure combined with childcare) leisure for German parents (lone versus partnered) by considering five diverse factors: demographics, job characteristics, spatial and travel attributes, time use perception/preferences, and gendering of partner interactions. We used the cross-sectional German Time Use Survey 2012/13 data and employed regression analysis. Four important findings of the study are: (a) across groups, women have the highest levels of contaminated leisure, while men have the highest levels of pure leisure; (b) for both lone and partnered respondents, spatial attributes (less dense residential areas), travel attributes (paid work trips, unpaid work trips, number of cars, travel by public transport) negatively determine both pure and contaminated leisure; (c) for partnered respondents, driving is positively associated with contaminated leisure; (d) partner’s time spent on childcare negatively affects women’s pure leisure but positively relates to their contaminated leisure, while partner’s time spent on leisure activities positively affects men’s pure leisure and contaminated leisure.