Family and Work: The Family's Perspective
Executive Summary
Key Findings of the Research
- Children's satisfaction in relation to parents' time spent working
- Parents' satisfaction with time spent with children in relation to time spent working
- Importance of the nature of time spent together
- Children's views of the benefits of parental work
- Importance of flexible work practices
- Children's future intentions
Executive Summary
The Australian Institute of Family Studies was commissioned in February 2001 by the former Department of Family and Community Services, following a recommendation from the Marriage and Family Council, to conduct a study that would parallel US research conducted by Ellen Galinsky. The primary aim of the research was to compare and contrast the themes that emerged from semi-structured interviews with parents and children in Australia with the themes identified by Galinsky (1999).
The secondary aims of the research were to explore child and parent perspectives on how work impacts on parent-child relationships and child wellbeing, with attention to the concordance or discordance between parents and children from the same family. Furthermore, the research aimed to consider the ways in which parents work at maintaining positive parent-child relationships and child well-being.
It was intended that the project interview parents and children from approximately 50 families. Upon completion of the project, 69 parents and 71 children from 47 families were interviewed, each individually. Interviews with each adult took approximately 1 hour, and interviews with each child took approximately half an hour. The children ranged in age from 8 to 21, with most children being in the age range of 10 to 12 years old.
This report provides an assessment of the findings, including identification of issues that may warrant further investigation or provide an impetus for future theoretical or policy development. In particular this report examines how parents and children perceive the impact of work on parent-child relationships - both in general and in their own families - and the ways in which parents and children consider that positive relationships can be maintained when parents are engaged in the labour force.
One of the main outcomes of this project was the presentation and delivery of a paper at the conference entitled "Work and Family: Listening to Our Children" which was organised by the former Department of Family and Community Services and the Marriage and Family Council. Ellen Galinsky was the keynote speaker at this conference, and a paper based on this project, entitled "Family and Work: the Family's Perspective", was also presented as a keynote speech.
Key Findings of the Research
Children's satisfaction in relation to parents' time spent working:
Children and parents were asked specifically whether they felt that they had enough time with each other. 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. All possible combinations of employment and satisfaction with family time were observed in the sample. There were parents working full-time whose children felt that they worked about the right amount of time, and with whom they spent enough time. There were parents working part-time whose children said that they worked too much, and with whom the children would like to spend more time. Between these two extremes, all other possible combinations were observed.
Parents' satisfaction with time spent with children in relation to time spent working:
Parents' judgements about whether they had enough time with their children were also not directly related to hours of employment. Some parents working full-time were very satisfied with the amount of time they had, while some parents working part-time felt that they would like more time with their children. While actual hours worked did not necessarily relate directly to feelings about time spent with children for some parents, many parents talked about using job flexibility to allow them to spend critical time with children. Most of the parents in the sample had made significant changes to the way that they worked since they had their children, often in the direction of 'scaling back'. Some of these changes were induced by circumstances, but many were changes that parents made in an effort to better manage work and family issues. It was noticeable that it was primarily mothers who were utilizing these 'scaling back' strategies, although several fathers expressed a desire to take turns with their partners.
Importance of the nature of time spent together:
The amount of time that children spent with their parents mattered to both children and parents, but it was not just the amount of time that was important for the quality of family functioning. The nature of the time spent together mattered too. Children and parents talked about sharing both focussed activities and relaxed time doing everyday kinds of things. The way that children expected parents to share in their everyday lives varied with the age and developmental stage of children. When the children were primary school aged, they appeared to want their parents to be involved in their lives at primary school. For example, the younger children definitely wanted parents to come to special events at school, and identified being picked up from school by parents as a critical point where parents could learn about their lives. Older children, from upper primary grades onwards, were more ambivalent about parental involvement in their school lives, but there was a strong sense that they still expected parents to be interested.
Children's views of the benefits of parental work:
While they had preferences for how much time they spent with parents, and the nature of the time spent with parents, none of the children thought that parents should be present in their lives all the time. Virtually all the children accepted the need for and/or desire of parents to work, and all could identify the benefits of parental employment, particularly in the case of their own experience. When asked whether parents' working was good or bad for children in a general sense, nearly all the children and their parents responded sensibly with conditional statements such as "it depends". Children of all ages could see that there were financial benefits of working, and older children also talked about less tangible benefits such as increased responsibility and confidence. Parents talked about the benefits for children of having a parent whose self-esteem was strong, and who had a broad world outlook. Nearly all the children and parents noted that one of the bad things that could follow from "too much" work was a loss of time spent together.
Importance of flexible work practices:
For parents, there was a strong sense that the parents' prior expectations about whether they would work when they had children, and their beliefs about the impact of work on children, had an impact on both their own and their children's satisfaction with time spent together. It seemed to be the case that some of the children expressing dissatisfaction with their time with parents were reflecting the parent's dissatisfaction. Whether the children are conscious of the parent's feelings from overt statements or subtle cues, the consequence may be poorer family functioning. This is important, as parents who feel that they don't have enough time with their children are often not in a position, either financially or socially, to change. Parents in this position often seemed to be working in the least flexible jobs. For these parents and children, strategies involving family friendly workplace initiatives would have particular importance.
Children's future intentions:
Based on the future intentions of the children interviewed for this study, the issue of how families navigate work and family is going to remain high on the agenda in the future. The children were asked whether they had plans for future employment and family. It is notable that nearly all the children in this small sample said that when they have children they intended to work. More than this, however, they had very clear ideas about how they wanted to work. Most of the children said that they would work part-time for at least the early part of their children's lives, perhaps returning to full-time work as their children got older. Nearly all the children referred to being able to spend enough time with their children.
Conclusions
Both Galinsky's research and the present study 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. 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 doing this already. It is notable that all the parents who participated in this research were responding to the issue of how to manage work and family responsibilities in an active way. Many parents had developed strategies to improve the quality of family functioning. Many of these strategies involved making use of flexible conditions of employment. Some strategies were related to parenting practices themselves. The research provides an insight into the context in which families are living today, and reflects an emerging vision of how the children of today expect to be able to "balance" their work and family commitments in the future.
It is important to note that neither Galinsky's (1999) research, nor this research have either the capacity or intent to address the question of the long-term outcomes of parental employment for children. It is important not to interpret this research as a comment on how parental employment actually impacts on developmental outcomes for children, such as their school achievement, or their behavioural and emotional adjustment. For instance, a child who expresses the view that they like to be home alone after school may be saying so because they do not like being supervised to do homework, yet parental supervision of homework may be an important factor in school achievement. Likewise, a child may say that they never like to be alone, but the experience of being alone may lead to greater independence and self-reliance that could be beneficial in the long term. In other words, current perceptions may not be tightly linked to long-term outcomes. The current research aims solely to explore the immediate experience of the lives being lived by the families. This is not a trivial question. Life choices are not made by reference to long-term impacts alone - people also expressed a need to enjoy life and feel happy.
The distinction between current experience and later outcomes is perhaps clearest in the children's expression of their future intentions about working and having families. All of the children believed that they would work when they had children. Some talked about having some time off when children were young and gradually re-entering the workforce as their children started school. Most talked about controlling their hours in some way, usually referring to this as "working part-time". This suggests children are placing a high value on parental availability to children during the early years in particular.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the children appeared to be aware of the potential cost to income or career of taking these scaling back options. In contrast, many of the parents talked about the potential negative impacts of using workplace family friendly policies, including not being seen as eligible for promotion, and not being seen as committed to the job.
Many parents in professional occupations were choosing not to work at senior levels because of the perceived cost to their families. This was often because of work-related stress and the expectation of working unpaid overtime, both of which they perceived had a negative impact on parenting. It was noticeable that many of the professionals were working long hours of overtime, particularly at home after children had gone to bed, or at times when children were not around. This pattern reflects Time Use research which suggests that mothers are spending similar amounts of time with their children, but that they are achieving this by spending less time on themselves, their relationships and in domestic labour. The cost for employers of experienced and skilled professionals refusing to work at senior levels because of the perceived impact on their families is a hidden cost of some current work arrangements. This research reflects a social context that appears to be changing, or at least which many parents would like to see change. It appeared from the responses of many of the parents that attitudes within the workplace may not be shifting as quickly as they would like them to. As one father said, many organizations will not necessarily change in response to a new context, because those who lead them are people who have, in the past, been forced to make a "choice" between work and family in order to advance their careers. This father reflected the idea that an individual's own choices may impact upon their level of understanding of another's decisions.
Reflecting the statistics that show that most parents will participate in the labour force, the majority of parents in this study did not consider that they were making an "either/or" choice between work and family. Most were working and, although some considered that they were not working their preferred hours, virtually all parents were clearly committed to working. Children appeared to share this view that work was an essential part of adult life. When parents and children were asked what they would change about work if they had all the money in the world, very few thought that not working at all would be a desirable option. However, many talked about working less, or in ways that allowed them to spend more time together.
The children in this study and many of the parents reflected a new terrain of family life. Rather than adults choosing between working and parenting, most children and the majority of parents indicated that they believed it was possible to have a strong commitment to work simultaneously with a strong commitment to family. It is rare for the issue to be presented in this way in public discourse, or even in research. In talking about their intentions and expectations, the children in this study reflected a strong impression of the pattern that many of the parents are trying to achieve in valuing work while having enough time for family. Clearly work is neither devalued nor demonized by the children. Work is not seen as an "other" that takes parents away from children. Rather, the children in this study reflected an acceptance of a new social context in which adults strive to have satisfying jobs and be good parents, and where experiences in the two domains can add strength to each other.
It seemed that a lot of the families were beginning to grapple with this new sense of work/family balance. In the past, balance was often achieved across a family unit, most commonly by having the father work full-time and the mother work not at all or part-time. In contrast, , many of these parents were looking for both a personal balance and a family balance. There was still a strong tendency for women to be more likely to use scaling back strategies, but many of the fathers in this study talked about wanting to find their own level of personal balance within the family also. This research suggests that policies that support this new approach to work and family would be likely to benefit parents and children, now and in the future.
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