We study the determinants of parental educational time investment in a representative

sample in the Netherlands. Informed by a simple model of parental time allocation,

we design hypothetical scenarios to elicit beliefs about the human capital production

function and within-family distributional attitudes. On average, respondents clearly

favor higher educational time investments in lower-ability children. Our results suggest

that this compensating investment is driven by a desire to equalize educational

outcomes between siblings and the perceived substitutability between ability and investment.

At the same time, respondents face a tradeoff between the perceived returns

to investment and their desire to equalize time investments between siblings. We further

test the malleability of parental investment behavior in an information provision

experiment that randomly assigns respondents to receive either a low or high estimate

of the heritability of primary school achievement. Respondents receiving the high heritability

estimate invest slightly more in the lower-ability child, but the treatment does

not affect perceived returns to investment or distributional attitudes.