Work–Family Issues of Mothers of Teenage Children

This paper addresses the question of how families manage the after-school care of younger (11–14) and older (15–17) teenage children. I examine how mothers of teenage children view their after-school care, and how they coordinate their paid work and their family responsibilities to accommodate the lives of their older children. How families, particularly mothers, manage the after-school care of older children is a question that few researchers or policymakers have addressed. In this paper I argue that this is a topic which not only has important policy implications, but also raises basic issues about how work and family are structured in the United States.