The polarisation and intensification of parental employment in britain: Consequences for children,families and the community

On the basis of an analysis of UK parental employment between 1984 and 1994, using data from the Labour Force Survey, the authors identify three important trends: increasing integration of women with children, particularly with young children, into the labour market; increasing differentiation in mothers' employment opportunities and growing polarisation in household employment patterns; and an intensification of paid work amongst employed parents, contributing to a growing concentration of work–both paid and unpaid caring work–among women and men in the so-called 'prime working years' of 25 to 50 years. The article considers some possible consequences of these trends for children, families and communities, including the polarisation of children's childhoods, family incomes and neighbourhoods, the increasing workload on individual parents and families, tension between parents over the division of child care and domestic tasks and the issue of lime. The article concludes that the current UK focus on policies to support working parents in 'reconciling employment and family responsibilities' begs the question of how far these, and other activities, are reconcilable–and if they are, under what conditions, what cost and to whom–and may fail to address the difficult, threatening and 'wicked issues' at the heart of the work-family relationship.     

Is family planning an economic decision?

This study examines economic models of household choice and the role of economic factors in determining the timing of births. A static economic model is presented and tested with data from the Netherlands. After the availability of contraceptives, the family size variable shifted from being an exogenous to an endogenous one, because births could be regulated. Costs of childbearing were construed to have maintenance costs for parents and society, attendance costs of care, and intangible costs such as anxiety or personal freedom. Benefits were intangible ones, such as joy and happiness; income; public benefits; and attendance benefits. Intangible benefits enlarged the utility of children, but maintenance costs diminished resources available for consumption. Child quality was a product of market goods purchased by parents and others and household labor. Household time allocation varied with child's age. Private responsibility for children varied by country. Quality of child care varied between countries and over time. Quality was dependent upon economies of scale, variable costs by the age of the child, variable time commitments by age of the child, and market substitutes for private child care. Higher income families spent more money but less time on children. It is pointed out that Becker's model explained number of children, but not timing of births. Postponement of birth was unlikely for those with a limited education, an unpleasant job, and low wages. When the advantages and disadvantages of having a baby were positive, spouses or single women with a high subjective preference were expected to bear a child as soon as possible. Government policy can affect the average family size by increasing or decreasing the financial and/or time burden of children. Postponement may be chosen based on long term analysis of a couple's future, the formation and use of capital, and/or high subjective time preference. Before and after first birth are different frames of reference for couples. Before the birth, the future may be vague. After the birth, life without a child becomes unimaginable.     

Soziale Ungleichheiten beim Schulstart

Although there is a regular age of school entry in Germany, some children start school later than usual and some children start ahead of schedule. While there has been some decrease in delayed school entries in the last years, the rate of premature school entry has increased substantially. Paradoxically, while the delayed entry is primarily because professionals rate a child as not ready for school, the premature entry is mainly based on parents’ choice. The first aim of the paper is to discover whether kindergarten attendance can reduce the risk of a delayed entry. The arguments and hypotheses are mainly based on the theory on the ecology of human development of Bronfenbrenner. The empirical analyses demonstrate that low educated families profit most by kindergarten attendance, but only if the child begins attending the care institution before reaching age four. The second aim concerns considerations in regard to the decision of prematurely entering school. Socio-economic conditions are not as important at this point as compared with a delay in school entry. However, there are some effects indicating that higher educated parents foster a premature entry to elementary schools. The analyses are based on over 1.400 children in the relevant age group and their parents taking part in the large nationwide German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP).     

Helping mothers to combine paid and unpaid work–or fighting unemployment? the ambiguities of french family policy

The Family Law' passed by the French Parliament in July 1994 introduced important changes in family policy. Because the number of publicly subsidised childcare places is still very limited, and to encourage families to create employment (by employing childcare workers), the government has chosen to encourage the development of a variety of childcare provisions by increasing the financial incentives payable to parents employing a private nanny or child-minder. The same rationale of reducing unemployment has also prompted the decision to extend existing child rearing benefit to families having a second child. This measure has been very successful in encouraging women to retire from the labour market. The high cost of these changes has been shared by Social Security and the State. However, the changes have contributed to the increased polarisation between higher and lower wages families, with highly qualified mothers, who can afford childcare costs, remaining in paid employment after giving birth, and lower qualified mothers leaving the labour market.     

Mothers' Union Statuses and Their Involvement in Young Children's Schooling

U.S. schools often expect the educational involvement of parents, which may be facilitated when parents have partners, especially a partner also invested in the child. As such, parental involvement at school and at home could be a channel of the diverging destinies of U.S. children from different families. This study applied fixed effects modeling to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort to examine the link between mothers' union statuses and their involvement behaviors. Being partnered appeared to benefit mothers' school and home involvement when children were in the primary grades, with little evidence of an additional benefit from that partnership being marital. A biological tie between the male partner and the child only seemed to matter for mothers' school involvement. These patterns did not vary by family income, maternal depression, or maternal employment, but they were stronger when children were just beginning schooling.     

Inverse J Effect of Economic Growth on Fertility: A Model of Gender Wages and Maternal Time Substitution

This paper presented a model where economic growth, via growth in female wages relative to male wages, encouraged households to raise paid female labor supply and have more children by substituting child care for maternal time. A threshold logarithm per capita output, above which fertility decline reverses, was predicted to depend on subsidized child care, maternity pay, and the value placed on children and maternal time spent rearing children. The predictions explained recent evidence and identified cross country differences in gender wages, family policy and willingness to substitute maternal time in childrearing as important factors in an inverse J-shaped effect of economic growth on fertility. The analysis was robust to the introduction of education and cost sharing among children in child rearing. Economies of scale in child rearing reduced the threshold logarithm of per capita output. Demand for child quality continued to rise with wages despite fertility decline reversal.     

An Assortative Adoption Marketplace: Foster Care,Domestic, and Transnational Adoptions

Among sociologists of the family, there has been relatively little attention paid to child adoption. When it is mentioned, many characterize the process as a universal family form. The goal of this review is to complicate this subject by disaggregating adoption into three different market segments: foster care, domestic, and transnational. Specifically, the paper argues that adoption is an assortative process that stratifies parents and children. Of the members of the adoption triad (e.g. the birthmother, adoptive parent(s), and adopted child), prospective adoptive parents possess the greatest degree of choice when deciding which market segment to pursue. However, their options are often tempered by strict eligibility requirements and financial restraints. Drawing broadly on the extant sociological and child welfare literature, the bulk of the review is devoted to identifying and analyzing how these social forces funnel parents and children into forever families. I pay particular attention to the demographic profiles of children and adoptive parents, including how transracial adoption factors into foster care, domestic, and intercountry adoptions.     

The Effect of Parental Presence, Parents’ Education, and Household Headship on Adolescents’ Schooling and Work in Latin America

We investigate how the presence and education of parents affect adolescents’ school attendance, work participation, and school attainment in Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Panama. Across the four countries, approximately 20% of adolescents live in single-mother families and 4% in single-father families. Adolescents who live in single-mother families have significantly lower school attendance and attainment than adolescents who live with both parents. However, the effects of living in a single-mother family are small relative to the effects of parents’ education. Adolescents who live in single-mother families are not more likely to work than adolescents in two-parent families. Finally, targeting benefits to children in single-mother families would reach more children at risk of poor school outcomes than targeting children in female-headed households.Mary Arends-Kuenning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 408 Mumford Hall, MC-710, 1301 W. Gregory, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: marends@uiuc.edu.Suzanne Duryea, Inter-American Development Bank, 1300 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20577, USA; e-mail: suzanned@iadb.org.     

All Work and no Play? Understanding the Needs of Children with Caring Responsibilities

This article draws on research with children who provide care for parents with serious mental health problems and signals ongoing research that uses photographic participation methods with these groups of vulnerable children. The intention of this article is to highlight the need to move away from popular and simplistic representations of children with caring responsibilities (young carers) as victims of their parents’ illnesses, as ‘little angels’ whose caring work is condoned through rewards or as (exploited) informal domestic workers whose childhoods are inevitably compromised by the caring activity they undertake. Recommendations are made for generating deeper understanding about the lives and needs of children who are affected by parental impairment that is congruent with the thrust of current UK policy, Every Child Matters and the 2004 Children Act.     

Using Policy-Relevant Administrative Data in Mixed Methods: A Study of Employment Instability and Parents’ Use of Child Care Subsidies

In the United States, government subsidies help low-income families pay for child care when parents are working, yet policies that tie subsidy eligibility closely to employment may result in frequent disruptions in program participation for families. This paper uses a mixed methods research design that links administrative records on families and children to data collected through surveys and in-depth interviews to examine employment instability and job characteristics of parents using child care subsidies. The results suggest that parents experience substantial employment instability (employment loss and unpredictable schedules) and that exiting the subsidy program is frequently related to employment-related eligibility factors. Overall, the use of administrative data integrated with other methods provides substantial opportunities for researchers to explore complex social phenomenon and provide insights in the evaluation of social programs.     

Expectations of Greek Parents about Employment Opportunities for their Child with Learning Disabilities: Implications for Social Workers

A survey was carried out in Heraklion, Crete, to determine the expectations on employment of all parents who had a child with learning disabilities (LDs) between the age of 14 and 45 years, living with them and having participated in some educational or vocational programme for at least 1 year. From the 310 families, which fulfilled the criteria for admission in the current study, 176 families participated. The research method chosen was a structured interview. The results demonstrated that parents expected their LD child not to work or to work in a sheltered workshop whereas, ideally, most parents wanted some form of competitive employment for their children. The findings suggest that social workers and other professionals should inform parents more positively about the potential abilities of their children and emphasise the importance of a job for all parties involved.     

THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM? BIRTH ORDER EFFECTS IN A DYNAMIC FAMILY MODEL

Birth order effects are found in empirical work but lack solid theoretical foundations in economics. Our new modeling approach to children provides this. Each child’s needs change as it grows, and births are sequential. Each child has the same genetic makeup and parents do not favor one child over the other. Parental childcare time lowers the caregiver’s current and future wages; this opportunity cost varies across time. Benefits also vary and when parental childcare is a public input, coresident children allow economies of scope in childcare. Birth order effects emerge from the changing benefits and costs. (JEL D13, D91, J13)     

Foster Parents as a Critical Link and Resource in International Adoptions From Guatemala

Before the recent implementation of the Hague Convention requirements on intercountry adoption in Guatemala, most children in the process of being adopted by foreign nationals were cared for by foster parents. In the present study, 16 Guatemalan foster parents were interviewed regarding their experiences with and attitudes toward international and domestic adoption and fostering. Although adoption was generally described in positive terms as a means to improve the child's future, respondents also emphasized the economic dimension of international adoption. Foster parents’ views implied actions that are important for implementation of the Hague Convention requirements, including addressing poverty as the root cause of child relinquishment, reducing structural and attitudinal barriers to domestic adoption, and enlisting the aid of extended families in caring for children. With training and licensing, foster parents themselves might play a role in post-Hague procedures for providing families for children.     

School breakfast clubs,children and family support†

School breakfast clubs are a form of before school provision serving breakfast to children who arrive early. This paper explores their potential to provide support for families at risk of social exclusion. A national evaluation of a Department of Health pilot initiative suggests that their provision can afford valued support to families coping with varying degrees of difficulty in their material, environmental, relational and social circumstances. Many parents regarded clubs as successful in encouraging children to eat breakfast, reducing pressures in the morning and providing an additional source of affordable, trusted child care to those in work, studying or seeking employment. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parental education, time in paid work and time with children: an Australian time-diary analysis

How does parental education affect time in the paid workforce and time with children? Potentially, the effects are contradictory. An economic perspective suggests higher education means a pull to the market. Human capital theory predicts that, because higher education improves earning capacity, educated women face higher opportunity costs if they forego wages, so will allocate more time to market work and less to unpaid domestic labour. But education may also exercise a pull to the home. Attitudes to child rearing are subject to strong social norms, and parents with higher levels of education may be particularly receptive to the current social ideal of attentive, sustained and intensive nurturing. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time‐use Survey 1997, this study offers a snapshot of how these contradictory pulls play out in daily life. It finds that in Australia, households with university‐educated parents spend more daily time with children than other households in physical care and in developmental activities. Sex inequality in care time persists, but fathers with university education do contribute more time to care of children, including time alone with them, than other fathers. Mothers with university education allocate more daily time than other mothers to both childcare and to paid work.     

FAMILY STRUCTURE AND COLLEGE GRADUATION: IS THE STEPPARENT EFFECT MORE NEGATIVE THAN THE SINGLE PARENT EFFECT?

We use data from the National Longitudinal Education Study (NELS) to build upon previous research that considered the negative effects of living in mother-only families and stepparent families on the subsequent educational attainment of children. Our results break new ground in finding that although those who lived in a mother-only family are not less likely overall to graduate college than those who lived with two biological parents, they are significantly less likely to graduate college given four-year college attendance even when other important factors are controlled. In addition, we find that those who lived in a stepparent family are less likely overall to graduate college than those who lived with two biological parents when other important factors are controlled. This difference for those who lived in a stepparent family is due to lower chances of four-year college attendance given high school graduation and of college graduation given four-year college attendance.     

Relatives as Child Care Givers: After Hours Support for Nontraditional Workers

This study uses a sample of 1,841 families from the National Child Care Survey (1990) and accompanying Low-Income Supplement (1990) to determine the amount and timing of child care services offered by relatives to working families with young children. Results indicate that relative care is primarily provided by grandparents. Compared to other parents, single parents and those working nontraditional hours are significantly more likely to use relatives for child care, and their children spend significantly longer periods of time in relative care, especially at nontraditional times of the day. The study conclusion is that relatives are facilitating parental employment by providing child care at times of the day when other market alternatives usually are not available.     

Inequality and education decisions in developing countries

In this paper we analyze the effect of inequality on school enrollment, preferred tax rate and expenditure per student in developing countries; when parents can choose between child labor, public schooling or private schooling. We present a model in which parents make schooling decisions for their children, weighing the utility benefit of having a child with formal public or private education versus the forgone income from child labor or household work. Parents vote over the preferred tax rate to finance freely provided public education. The utility benefit of an educated child is proportional to expenditure per student, so that there is congestion in public school. We find that when parents can send their children to work or to private school, high inequality leads to exit from public education at both ends of the income distribution. Thus high inequality reduces the support for public education, leading to a low tax rate and expenditure per student. Exit from public education results in both high child labor and a large fraction of students attending private school. In fact there is a threshold level of inequality above which there is no longer support for public education. In addition we explore the implications for the design of foreign aid. The results suggest that foreign aid policies should focus on promoting school attendance rather than increasing school resources, as the later policy might be offset by a reduction in the recipient country’s fiscal effort, with little impact on outcomes.      

From Foster Care to Adoption and Guardianship: A Twenty-First Century Challenge

For nearly four decades, child welfare policy and practice have focused on the achievement of legal permanence for children in foster care. Although federal child welfare policy has resulted in the movement of children from state custody to legally permanent adoptive or guardianship families, little is known about the quality and enduring nature of these placements. A significant challenge of the twenty-first century child welfare system is how to ensure the well-being of children currently living with adoptive parents or guardians. This paper discusses child welfare policy and trends related to post-permanency well-being, including the decrease in Title IV-E foster care caseloads nationwide and the simultaneous increase in Title IV-E adoptive and guardianship caseloads. We highlight the needs of a twenty-first century child welfare system, including increased federal efforts to ensure child permanence and well-being after legal adoption or guardianship has been achieved, as well as more rigorous longitudinal and interdisciplinary research focused on the post-permanency adjustment of children and their families.     

Family Processes and Adolescent Religiosity and Religious Practice: View From the NLSY97

This article focuses on family processes and adolescent religious attendance and personal religiosity. We find that the closeness and quality of the marital relationship and relationship between adolescent and parents significantly contributes to the strength of adolescent religious conviction and practice. The study used data from the NLSY97 cohort. Predictors include parenting style, closeness, and parent–child closeness; family structure; income, employment, parental education, mother's age at first birth, and number of siblings; adolescent characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, lying or cheating); and environmental characteristics (e.g., region of country, urbanicity, and physical environment risk). Family religious attendance was dramatically influenced by race in adolescents aged 16 years. Adolescents living with married, biological parents in 1997 were 36% more likely to attend worship services than those living with stepfamilies. Adolescents living in more physically risky environments, with peers who belonged to gangs, cut classes, or had sex, were less likely to attend weekly worship services with their families. Finally, compared with adolescents whose parents had a high-quality marital relationship and who had good relationships with both parents, all other adolescents were less likely to attend weekly worship services with their families.