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Generally, studies of parents’ multitasking behaviors have been accomplished through self-reports and time diaries. Within that literature, multitasking is understood as episodes in which people report being engaged in more than one activity at a time, usually defined as a ‘main activity’ and a ‘secondary activity.’ In this paper, I analyze video recordings of naturally occurring interactions with a focus on working parents’ weekday activities at home, and particularly, parents’ multitasking practices. I suggest that through a closer look at the sequence organization of activities and how attention is managed in interaction, we can produce a more robust definition of multitasking, as well as a deeper analysis of how activities concurrently operate. The analyses I present suggest that time, attention, and activity-type are important aspects of an emergent model of multitasking. |
