Family and Work: The Family's Perspective
15 Conclusions
In drawing conclusions from this research, it must be remembered that all the children who were interviewed were aged 8 and over. This research cannot comment on the experiences of families with only younger children. It should also be noted that very few of the parents worked extremely long hours, with only a few parents reporting working more than 50 hours per week.
Having talked to 71 children from 47 families, one of the clearest conclusions to be drawn is that many parents may gain new insights into the way that they are navigating work and family if they talk to their children. Children have opinions about whether the amount of time that parents can spend with them feels like enough, and they have opinions about what they would like to do in the time that parents are available to them. These opinions are not easily predicted by the hours that parents work. It is clear that in this sample of children aged 8 and over, children by and large accepted their parents' work status, but even when judging parents' work hours as "alright', they also expressed a need to have parents available, especially for particular kinds of shared activities. The pattern of responses to the two questions revealed that it was inappropriate and potentially misleading to reduce analysis of the work-family relationship to purely the number of hours worked by parents.
When there is discussion about parental employment and children, it is often assumed that time itself is the key variable – that more time is better, and that parents and children should all want as much time together as possible. This research suggests that children and parents both use the concept of time to refer to much more than either just the quantity of time, or what they do in the time they share. Neither parents nor children report that work has a negative influence on every aspect of family life or parent/child interaction. Very few of the children in our sample reported that they had trouble getting parents to focus on them. Very few reported having to wait for parents because of their work. Very few reported that their parents worked at home in such a way that the children felt they were unavailable to them. Similarly very few parents reported that work interfered with their capacity to pay attention to children, nor did many parents report work as interfering in the home – at least as far as the children were concerned. Both parents and children did talk about other factors that influence the relationship between work and family. For example, some parents talked about needing greater flexibility at work in order to exert more control over the impact that work may have on their capacity to be available to their children.
The way that parents and children talked about work and family in this research is consistent both with models of work and family interaction, and models of parent-child interactions. There are many aspects of a job that impact on how parents feel about working. Galinsky's model emphasizes some of these factors, including job demands, job quality and support at work. Other factors which Galinsky acknowledged but gave less emphasis to, such as how much parents are paid, and what kinds of family friendly initiatives are available within the work place, also appear to be important. All of these aspects of work can affect family functioning and parents' relationships with children.
Within families there are internal and external factors that will have an effect on how work and family impact on each other. Children have different needs that vary with their temperament and developmental stage. Parents differ in their capacities to provide the different kinds of attention and interaction that children need. Some of this difference in capacity comes from individual personality and adjustment, and some from external resources such as financial capacity and social supports. Some comes from differences in parenting skills, which may be enhanced through practice, effort or training. Some parenting roles require continuous quantities of time, and some parenting roles require regular commitments of time. Some parents in the study talked about being "better" at focused activity rather than time spent "dagging around", and vice versa. Work may impact both positively or negatively on parents' internal and external resources, thus affecting their capacity to parent well, but the effect of work will also be mediated by these same internal and external resources. For every parent and every child in each family, the patterns will be slightly different, so there will never be a one-solution-fits-all answer to managing work and family.
The question that needs to be addressed is whether the family is functioning well or not, and there is every indication from most of the families interviewed for this study that families can function well in a wide variety of circumstances. The children who were interviewed revealed themselves to be very adaptable. Some of the parents were having to compromise in terms of their ideals about how they would work and parent, but, even so, most of the parents in this sample were actively pursuing strategies that made their families function well within the constraints that they face. The fact that parents and children can adapt so well to less-than-ideal circumstances is something that is not acknowledged enough by society or within families. Many parents need to be less critical of themselves, and feel less guilty about the way that they are navigating work and family. However, this does not mean that it is not important to attempt to make circumstances easier for families wherever possible. It should also be borne in mind that parents who are not coping well with these challenges are unlikely to volunteer to take part in a study such as this, so this study cannot articulate their needs.
Parents should talk with their children, but it is important to be aware of how the concept of time is used when talking about work and family, both in the public discourse, and in private conversations in families. Children will mean different things when they talk about wanting more time with parents. Some will mean that they need someone to drive them somewhere, some will want to avoid after-school care, some will want to have the opportunity to have friends over, and some will mean that they want to spend more time talking and playing because it is fun. All of these may be legitimate desires and parents will need to decide whether they need to change the way they work in order to deal with them. In general, children in this sample expressed a desire for more family time to do more of the everyday things that they already find enjoyable. A few children who say that they want more time with a parent may mean that they are not happy with their family life. If the latter is true, then work may be one of many variables that is causing this feeling, but it is unlikely to be the only one, and it may not be about the number of hours that parents work. Some of the children in this sample were also coping with significant changes to family structure, and issues of time for these children often related to time spent with separated parents or re-partnered parents.
This research cannot give any answers to questions regarding children's outcomes. Children may not like homework supervision that a parent at home after school provides, but such monitoring and supervision may help them in the long-term. Similarly, an older child may not like having to be at home alone after school, but may gain independence and confidence through the experience. While it cannot comment on outcomes, this research can provide a guide to the kinds of questions that parents should ask themselves, and should ask their children, when evaluating the current state of family functioning. It is notable that all the parents who participated in this research were responding to the issue of how they manage work and family responsibilities in an active way. Many parents had developed strategies to improve the quality of family functioning. Some of these strategies involved changing jobs, cutting back hours, or making use of flexible conditions of employment, while some were related to parenting itself and how life at home is managed.
The fact that there is such a lively discourse about work and family in both the media and the community reflects the fact that parents are aware of these issues. However, this research encourages parents to include children in that conversation. To do this it may be necessary to reframe notions of family and work with "time" as only one of the critical factors that influence quality of family life, rather than using the concept of time as a summary for many factors. By doing this it should be possible to enrich debate, and make it easier for families to find solutions to their particular challenges.
One parent's advice reflected the importance of the societal context in which children of today are being brought up.
It's a normal way to live nowadays. 50 years ago it wasn't, but in the 21st century, women work the same as men and there is no difference. In a family you balance. One partner or the other works, or both work, but women and men are no different. I know several families where the woman is the sole income person. You work out what is normal for yourself, but in most families, both parents have some paid employment and that would be the norm. That's the way life is. It may change in another 50 years. It probably will change. But at the moment, that is the norm. Paid employment is normal.
The responses of children would tend to suggest that they accept this "normality" more easily than their parents do. Again, listening to children may reveal to parents that the ideal of family and parenting that they carry is no longer relevant. What are needed are new ways to debate how to parent while working, rather than continuing to return to a debate about whether to work or not.
The decisions about policy that affect families, and particularly the employment decisions of parents, need to take into account how to allow parents to continue to fulfill their parenting roles while working. This research would suggest that policies should be aimed at improving access to workplace conditions that allow parents to more successfully combine work and parenting responsibilities, such as flexible hours, regular part-time work, job-sharing, career break schemes, and flexible leave arrangements. Parents who use the strategy of working from home after children have gone to sleep, or in time that they can "steal" from leisure time, may be risking negative consequences for themselves, even if such strategies do not have an obvious impact on indicators such as time spent with children. It seems highly likely that the issue of overwork, which has become central to research and discourse about the work/family issue in Europe and America, will become more prominent in Australia in future years too.
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In drawing conclusions from this research, it must be remembered that all the children who were interviewed were aged 8 and over. This research cannot comment on the experiences of families with only younger children. It should also be noted that very few of the parents worked extremely long hours, with only a few parents reporting working more than 50 hours per week.
Having talked to 71 children from 47 families, one of the clearest conclusions to be drawn is that many parents may gain new insights into the way that they are navigating work and family if they talk to their children. Children have opinions about whether the amount of time that parents can spend with them feels like enough, and they have opinions about what they would like to do in the time that parents are available to them. These opinions are not easily predicted by the hours that parents work. It is clear that in this sample of children aged 8 and over, children by and large accepted their parents' work status, but even when judging parents' work hours as "alright', they also expressed a need to have parents available, especially for particular kinds of shared activities. The pattern of responses to the two questions revealed that it was inappropriate and potentially misleading to reduce analysis of the work-family relationship to purely the number of hours worked by parents.
When there is discussion about parental employment and children, it is often assumed that time itself is the key variable – that more time is better, and that parents and children should all want as much time together as possible. This research suggests that children and parents both use the concept of time to refer to much more than either just the quantity of time, or what they do in the time they share. Neither parents nor children report that work has a negative influence on every aspect of family life or parent/child interaction. Very few of the children in our sample reported that they had trouble getting parents to focus on them. Very few reported having to wait for parents because of their work. Very few reported that their parents worked at home in such a way that the children felt they were unavailable to them. Similarly very few parents reported that work interfered with their capacity to pay attention to children, nor did many parents report work as interfering in the home – at least as far as the children were concerned. Both parents and children did talk about other factors that influence the relationship between work and family. For example, some parents talked about needing greater flexibility at work in order to exert more control over the impact that work may have on their capacity to be available to their children.
The way that parents and children talked about work and family in this research is consistent both with models of work and family interaction, and models of parent-child interactions. There are many aspects of a job that impact on how parents feel about working. Galinsky's model emphasizes some of these factors, including job demands, job quality and support at work. Other factors which Galinsky acknowledged but gave less emphasis to, such as how much parents are paid, and what kinds of family friendly initiatives are available within the work place, also appear to be important. All of these aspects of work can affect family functioning and parents' relationships with children.
Within families there are internal and external factors that will have an effect on how work and family impact on each other. Children have different needs that vary with their temperament and developmental stage. Parents differ in their capacities to provide the different kinds of attention and interaction that children need. Some of this difference in capacity comes from individual personality and adjustment, and some from external resources such as financial capacity and social supports. Some comes from differences in parenting skills, which may be enhanced through practice, effort or training. Some parenting roles require continuous quantities of time, and some parenting roles require regular commitments of time. Some parents in the study talked about being "better" at focused activity rather than time spent "dagging around", and vice versa. Work may impact both positively or negatively on parents' internal and external resources, thus affecting their capacity to parent well, but the effect of work will also be mediated by these same internal and external resources. For every parent and every child in each family, the patterns will be slightly different, so there will never be a one-solution-fits-all answer to managing work and family.
The question that needs to be addressed is whether the family is functioning well or not, and there is every indication from most of the families interviewed for this study that families can function well in a wide variety of circumstances. The children who were interviewed revealed themselves to be very adaptable. Some of the parents were having to compromise in terms of their ideals about how they would work and parent, but, even so, most of the parents in this sample were actively pursuing strategies that made their families function well within the constraints that they face. The fact that parents and children can adapt so well to less-than-ideal circumstances is something that is not acknowledged enough by society or within families. Many parents need to be less critical of themselves, and feel less guilty about the way that they are navigating work and family. However, this does not mean that it is not important to attempt to make circumstances easier for families wherever possible. It should also be borne in mind that parents who are not coping well with these challenges are unlikely to volunteer to take part in a study such as this, so this study cannot articulate their needs.
Parents should talk with their children, but it is important to be aware of how the concept of time is used when talking about work and family, both in the public discourse, and in private conversations in families. Children will mean different things when they talk about wanting more time with parents. Some will mean that they need someone to drive them somewhere, some will want to avoid after-school care, some will want to have the opportunity to have friends over, and some will mean that they want to spend more time talking and playing because it is fun. All of these may be legitimate desires and parents will need to decide whether they need to change the way they work in order to deal with them. In general, children in this sample expressed a desire for more family time to do more of the everyday things that they already find enjoyable. A few children who say that they want more time with a parent may mean that they are not happy with their family life. If the latter is true, then work may be one of many variables that is causing this feeling, but it is unlikely to be the only one, and it may not be about the number of hours that parents work. Some of the children in this sample were also coping with significant changes to family structure, and issues of time for these children often related to time spent with separated parents or re-partnered parents.
This research cannot give any answers to questions regarding children's outcomes. Children may not like homework supervision that a parent at home after school provides, but such monitoring and supervision may help them in the long-term. Similarly, an older child may not like having to be at home alone after school, but may gain independence and confidence through the experience. While it cannot comment on outcomes, this research can provide a guide to the kinds of questions that parents should ask themselves, and should ask their children, when evaluating the current state of family functioning. It is notable that all the parents who participated in this research were responding to the issue of how they manage work and family responsibilities in an active way. Many parents had developed strategies to improve the quality of family functioning. Some of these strategies involved changing jobs, cutting back hours, or making use of flexible conditions of employment, while some were related to parenting itself and how life at home is managed.
The fact that there is such a lively discourse about work and family in both the media and the community reflects the fact that parents are aware of these issues. However, this research encourages parents to include children in that conversation. To do this it may be necessary to reframe notions of family and work with "time" as only one of the critical factors that influence quality of family life, rather than using the concept of time as a summary for many factors. By doing this it should be possible to enrich debate, and make it easier for families to find solutions to their particular challenges.
One parent's advice reflected the importance of the societal context in which children of today are being brought up.
- It's a normal way to live nowadays. 50 years ago it wasn't, but in the 21st century, women work the same as men and there is no difference. In a family you balance. One partner or the other works, or both work, but women and men are no different. I know several families where the woman is the sole income person. You work out what is normal for yourself, but in most families, both parents have some paid employment and that would be the norm. That's the way life is. It may change in another 50 years. It probably will change. But at the moment, that is the norm. Paid employment is normal.
The decisions about policy that affect families, and particularly the employment decisions of parents, need to take into account how to allow parents to continue to fulfill their parenting roles while working. This research would suggest that policies should be aimed at improving access to workplace conditions that allow parents to more successfully combine work and parenting responsibilities, such as flexible hours, regular part-time work, job-sharing, career break schemes, and flexible leave arrangements. Parents who use the strategy of working from home after children have gone to sleep, or in time that they can "steal" from leisure time, may be risking negative consequences for themselves, even if such strategies do not have an obvious impact on indicators such as time spent with children. It seems highly likely that the issue of overwork, which has become central to research and discourse about the work/family issue in Europe and America, will become more prominent in Australia in future years too.
Go to References
Back to Contents page