A study in Communications Psychology found that parents felt better and showed healthier stress hormone patterns on days when they had time for themselves. The research suggests that personal time may act as a daily recovery window for mothers and fathers managing work, caregiving, household duties and children’s schedules.
The study was led by Theresa Pauly of the Department of Gerontology at Simon Fraser University. It examined data from 318 American parents with children under 18 living at home. Parents completed evening reports across eight days and many also provided saliva samples so researchers could track cortisol, a hormone tied to the body’s stress response.
The results point to a simple but often scarce resource. On days when parents had personal time, they reported more positive feelings, fewer negative feelings and a healthier decline in cortisol across the day. The effects remained after the researchers accounted for daily stressors such as arguments, work problems, or stressful events at home.
Personal Time Linked to Better Mood
Personal time was defined in the study abstract as “time spent free from external demands and available for self-directed activities.” That definition matters because the study focused on a parent’s opportunity to step away from demands. It covered time free from work, caregiving and household responsibilities.
Each evening, parents reported whether they had the chance to take time for themselves that day. They also rated their emotions. Positive feelings included happiness, calmness and satisfaction. Negative feelings included anger, frustration, sadness and anxiety.
The pattern was consistent. On days with time for themselves, parents reported higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions. These were day-to-day differences within the same people, which helps show how a parent’s own better and harder days varied with the presence of personal time.
The average parent in the study was about 40 years old. Most participants were married or cohabiting with a partner. That makes the findings especially relevant to midlife parents who may be balancing paid work, family routines, school logistics and the constant background work of running a household.
Stress Hormones Showed a Healthier Daily Pattern
The study went beyond mood ratings by measuring salivary cortisol. Participants collected saliva several times per day for up to four days. This allowed researchers to examine how cortisol changed from morning to evening.
Cortisol usually starts higher in the morning and declines throughout the day. Researchers often look at the steepness of that decline. A steeper cortisol slope can reflect better recovery from daily stress demands. A flatter pattern has been linked in prior research to chronic stress and poorer health.
In this study, days with personal time were associated with steeper cortisol slopes. That means parents showed a more pronounced drop in cortisol across the day when they had an opportunity for time to themselves. The finding adds a biological layer to the mood results.
Daily stressors were included in the statistical models. That is important because stressful events can affect both mood and cortisol. The association between personal time and healthier patterns remained even after accounting for those stressful events.
Together, the emotional and hormonal findings suggest that physiological stress recovery may be connected to small pockets of self-directed time. The study does this without turning personal time into a luxury. It treats it as a measurable part of daily life that can be studied alongside stress exposure and emotion.
Personality Changed the Size of the Benefit
One of the study’s key findings was that the benefits varied by personality. The strongest effects appeared among parents who scored higher in neuroticism. This trait is linked with emotional sensitivity, worry and vulnerability to stress.
For those parents, days with personal time were tied to a larger reduction in negative emotions. They also showed healthier cortisol patterns in analyses focused on neuroticism. That suggests emotionally reactive parents may gain more from chances to regulate feelings and recover from daily strain.
The researchers also found stronger emotional benefits among parents high in openness. Openness is associated with curiosity, creativity, reflection and interest in new experiences. Parents with this trait may be especially likely to use personal time for reading, creative activities, music, reflection, or other restorative pursuits.
Other personality traits were included in the models as well. The study examined the broad set of five major personality traits. The clearest moderation patterns involved neuroticism and openness, which were linked to stronger reductions in negative affect on personal-time days.
This personality angle gives the study a more precise message. A single schedule change may feel different from one parent to another. Some parents may experience a small mood lift. Others may experience a more meaningful reset, especially when daily stress tends to hit them harder.
Why “Time for Yourself” Can Mean Many Things
Personal time in the study meant freedom from demands. It could include reading, exercising, listening to music, relaxing, pursuing a hobby, or simply taking a break from the stream of obligations. The central feature was self-direction.
A parent can have personal time while other people are nearby. A quiet walk with a child, a relaxed family activity, or an uninterrupted hobby while others are in the house may still feel restorative if the parent is free from pressure and demands. The feeling of control appears to be central.
Physical solitude can also feel draining when worries, chores, or work demands remain active. A parent sitting alone while mentally tracking emails, dinner, laundry and school forms may have little sense of recovery. The study’s definition focuses on relief from external demands rather than location.
The quality of the time may matter as much as the number of minutes. Previous work has linked exercise, meaningful leisure, creative hobbies and relaxation with better mood and recovery. In Pauly’s study, personal-time days often included more leisure activities.
Parents spent about one extra hour on leisure pursuits on days when they reported having time for themselves. The researchers also examined leisure time as a related measure. More leisure than usual showed a similar pattern, with higher positive affect, lower negative affect and a steeper cortisol decline.
Personal Time as a Health Resource
The findings fit a broader view of recovery. Parenting often requires sustained attention to other people’s needs. Children’s schedules, meals, transportation, homework, bedtime, illness and emotional support can crowd the day. Many parents also carry paid work and household labor at the same time.
Under those conditions, daily time for self-directed activity may help restore emotional energy. It can provide space for a parent to calm down, reconnect with personal interests, or shift the body out of a high-demand state. Even modest windows may matter when they happen regularly.
The study’s diary design helps capture ordinary life. Instead of asking parents to summarize the last month or year, the researchers collected daily reports. This eight-day diary study allowed them to compare parents’ experiences across different days.
That matters because family life fluctuates. A parent may have a demanding Monday, a calmer Tuesday and a stressful Wednesday. Daily methods can reveal how changes in time and stress connect to changes in mood and biology over short periods.
Pauly’s paper frames personal time as a potential resource for emotional renewal, self-care, self-connection and recovery from parenting stress. For families, workplaces and communities, the practical lesson is straightforward. Parents may benefit when routines leave some room for time that belongs to them.
What the Study Can and Can’t Prove
The study was observational. It followed parents in their real lives and looked for associations across days. That design can show that personal time and better same-day well-being travel together. It cannot prove that personal time directly caused the changes in mood or cortisol.
Other factors may also contribute. A day with personal time might be a day with fewer logistical demands, smoother family routines, better sleep, or stronger support from a partner or community. The researchers accounted for daily stress exposure, which strengthens the findings. Still, real life includes many moving parts.
The study also found little evidence that personal time on one day predicted next-day mood or cortisol after accounting for current-day personal time and stress exposure. That suggests the clearest signal was same-day recovery. Future work could test whether a daily personal-time habit builds longer-term benefits.
Experiments would be especially useful. Researchers could ask parents to set aside 15 to 30 minutes of self-directed time each day and then measure changes in mood, cortisol, sleep, or burnout symptoms. That type of design would help clarify cause and effect.
For now, the study offers a careful and useful finding. When parents had time free from demands, they tended to feel better and show healthier stress hormone patterns that same day. In the pressure of family life, personal time looks like a small resource with measurable links to emotional and biological recovery.
