It struck us that the parent who returns home earlier (or first) might be having a different homecoming experience from that of the parent who returns home later (or second). The first parent to return home, for example, does not have the opportunity to be welcomed home by his or her partner (because he or she has not yet returned), while the second parent can enjoy this possibility. At the same time, the first parent to return home is also often the parent who has picked up the children after their school and extracurricular activities. The first parent home, therefore, may be more likely to encounter children who are more eager to greet positively and share news about their day.

The second parent returning home has to reckon with family members absorbed in a stream of ongoing activities. The children have homework, which usually involves supervision by the first parent. The first parent also has usually been preparing dinner and monitoring other household tasks. In some families the children may be absorbed by TV watching or other media activities. These conditions affect how the second parent is welcomed by his or her children and partner.

It probably will come as no surprise to those documenting the lives of working women that the 30 working mothers in the study had first contact with the children on 76 percent of the weekdays observed, whereas their spouses had first contact with the children on 20 percent of them, and a babysitter or grandparent had first contact on four percent of them. Typically, the second parent arrived home to the partner and children roughly two hours later. Of the two weekdays that we video-recorded during the workweek, mothers arrived home earlier 60 percent of the time, twice as often as did their spouses.

That mothers more often had first contact with their children and arrived home earlier than did their spouses makes sense when looking at the working hours of these mothers and fathers. Fathers worked about two hours a day longer than the mothers in the study.

These parental differences in picking up children and returning home are compatible with other findings that contemporary working mothers assume the lion's share of childcare responsibilities. But overlooked in other studies is the possible effect that these arrangements may have on the integration of fathers into family life when they arrive home after mothers and children have been together. Let us now turn to how the mothers and fathers in the study were integrated into the family when they returned home after work.

How did family members welcome home working mothers and fathers? To answer this question, we created five categories of welcoming behaviors exhibited by children and partners: positive behaviors, reports of information, logistic behaviors, negative behaviors, and distraction. Sometimes a reunion was characterized by just one kind of welcoming behavior, while in other reunions, a family member displayed two or more kinds of welcoming responses to the returning parent.