The Relationship between Working Parents and the Socialization of Children Essay Example for Free

The Relationship between Working Parents and the Socialization of Children Essay Western countries family life has undergone so many transformations in recent years that the context within which paternal employment is now occurring is different from in the past. Technological developmentsincluding clothes dryers, no-iron fabrics, disposable diapers, home freezers, and processed foods of good qualityhave enormously diminished the amount of work necessary for operating a household; family size is smaller; marital instability has increased the necessity for women to establish occupational competence; economic pressures in general have increased; womens educational levels have risen; the adult roles for which children are being socialized are different; the prevailing social values have changed. Today full-time mothers as well as employed mothers may feel a need to justify their role, and the role of full-time mother is a less satisfying one according to a number of recent studies. The role of the present-day non employed mothers may be as new as the role of the majority of present-day mothers, who are employed. It is even difficult to know which represents more of continuity with the non employed mother of the past. It is possible that the individual child in todays employed-mother household receives as much attention as the individual child in yesterdays non employed-mother householdwork filling in the time previously spent on the extra household responsibilities and the additional children, while todays non employed mother represents the really new pattern. The non employed mother today may represent a more intense parent-child interaction than we have ever had before. There is no data base that would make testing that hypothesis possible, but it is important to keep in mind as employed-mother families are compared with non employed mother families; neither one represents the traditional pattern. Until recently there were very few studies of the effects of paternal employment on the infant and preschool child, largely because the pattern was unusual. But the pattern is no longer unusual. Hochschild (1997) stated that in 1992, over 48% of the mothers of preschoolers, with a husband present in the home, were employed; over 45% of the mothers of children under 3. For mothers with no current husband, a rapidly increasing group, the comparable figures were 60% and 53%. In fact the rate of increase in employment has been greatest for mothers of preschoolers. The current figure of 48.7% employment among married mothers of preschoolers, for example, is more than double the rate in 1985 (Hochschild, 1997). In 1960 less than 20 percent of mothers with preschool children were employed, but by 1972 this had risen to over 45 percent and by 1990 to over 50 percent. In 1960 less than 40 percent of mothers with school-aged children had employment outside of the home. By 1972 this rose to almost 50 percent and by year 2000 to over 60 percent (Kahn, Kamerman, 1987). A long-standing concern exists in our society about possible problems for young children when their mother works outside of the home (McDonald, 2001). In general, available evidence indicates that children from families with two employed parents are as a group similar to those with housewife mothers in terms of emotional, intellectual and physical development (Hochschild, Machung, 1989). Children with two employed parents generally show as much maternal attachment as those whose mothers are full-time housewives. However, maternal employment can, along with other family circumstances, have either positive or negative ramifications for particular children. Tannen (1991) assert many complex factors are involved in determining the impact of maternal employment including the age of the child, type of day-care arrangements and the amount of time the child is actually separated from the parents. The ways that maternal employment may affect the young child can be influenced greatly by the quality of the fathers involvement in parenting. Under some circumstances, maternal employment can have a quite positive influence on both the parents and the child. Maternal employment often defuses an overly intense parent-child relationship, allowing the woman to develop more generalized feelings of competence. On the other hand, if the mothers employment means an already somewhat neglected child receives even less attention, there can be very negative implications for family functioning (Tannen, 1991). The employed mother can provide the father with an opportunity for a closer one-to-one relationship with his child. In many families before the advent of the employed mother, the father was less likely to be with a young child in individualized situations. More than one-third of all child-care arrangements made to aid employed mothers involve some increased participation by fathers. This can be a great advantage indeed if fathers realize their potential positive influence on children. The child with employed parents may also be able to spend some time, at least occasionally, at each of their workplaces. It can be quite stimulating for even very young children to discover that their mothers and fathers are competent adults outside the home. Unfortunately, most employed mothers in two-parent families still find themselves having much more than their fair share of household and parenting responsibilities (Morris, 1992). Wives often balance employment and parenthood better than their husbands do. Employment does not in itself detract from a womans motherhood. The personal satisfaction derived for the woman who enjoys her career may actually increase her effectiveness as a parent. The fact that the employed mother can be a very competent parent while still spending time away from home should support the contention that more fathers can also combine successful careers with effective child rearing. Among educated middle-class mothers, evidence suggests that many of those who are employed actually spend more quality one-to-one time with their children than do most of those who have no career. Many mothers who are home much of the day feel that simply being there is enough for their children. In contrast, employed mothers may feel that they must positively make up for being away from their children. Fathers, too, can learn a great deal from such mothers (Sassoon, 1987). Working mothers who have highly demanding careers tend to become more focused in their attention to their children when they are at home. Most working mothers realize that their children definitely need a period of close contact with them on a daily basis. They are usually committed to quality after-work time with their children. The child may get even more constructive attention from a working mother than from one who does not have a career. The housewife might not have as much of a need to interact as positively with her child on a one-toone basis. After all, she may feel that she is always at home anyway. When a mother has been the primary parent and then decides to pursue a career, especially before her children reach adolescence, much stress may be put on the marital relationship and the family system. In cases where the mother has assumed traditional responsibilities, the transition of going to work or back to school requires role redefinitions affecting both parents and children. Modification of conceptions of marital and parenting responsibilities is necessary but may be difficult to some extent for all family members. The first year in the familys readjustment to the mothers changing status is crucial. Unfortunately many couples cannot adapt in a successful way, and their marriages may deteriorate, sometimes ending in divorce. However, if they stay together during the difficult transition period, most couples actually seem to develop better relationships than when only the husband was an employed parent (Twigg Atkin, 1994). More than half of the preschool children in the United States spend a considerable part of the work week being cared for by someone other than their parents. Estimates show that even though thirty million children under fourteen years of age have mothers who work, there are only five million places available for them in before and afterschool care centers (Wolcott Glezer, 1995). Few studies have looked at the relationship between child stress and maternal employment. In a study by Tannen (1991), 180 adolescent girls and 92 adolescent boys thirteen to nineteen years of age participated in a study to determine whether their mothers employment status had any consequence on their sense of wellbeing. While no considerable results were found for the boys in the sample, the daughters of women employed full-time outside the home were considerably more likely to feel they could not approach their mothers or peers with personal problems; these girls also reported drastically greater life stress than the daughters of mothers who stayed in the home. The author stated, The sources of stress which female adolescents with working mothers found to be most intense imply that the absence of the mother should leave a substantial void in their lives and It seems that maternal employment can be associated with difficulties in the relationship of the parents and this consecutively created a stressful environment for the adolescents. (Wearing Wearing, 1996) The last two decades has seen a emerging of scholarly interest in work family relationships, but thus far the definition of work and family as a distinctive research domain has proceeded mainly as a search for the fundamental effects of specific working conditions on family life. The emotional edge between parents work experiences and qualities of parent-child relationships has been a mainly intriguing subject, leading some researchers to look at the ways in which a parents work-related stresses (deriving from work overload, for instance, or from lack of job autonomy) spill over into the family domain. Most research has emphasized the negative consequences of job spillover, as evidenced by parents emotional taking out or by their controlling, punitive behavior toward their children (Traustadottir, R. 1991; Wearing, Wearing, 1996). In their efforts to elucidate the causal connections between workplace experiences and family interaction, researchers have leaned to take as self-evident the conceptual distinction between work and family. Yet what describes an activity as work or as family is far from clear-cut. Nearly everyone of us who work outside the home are familiar with the ways in which family responsibilities break in the workplace, for example, in the form of personal phone calls to and from family members throughout working hours or in office conversations with co-workers about family-related subjects (Traustadottir, 1991). The division of labor between men and women stated by economic circumstances, womens adjustment to their economic responsibilities as replicated in their management of their time and delegation of tasks to their children and other family members, and the emergence of social behavior in children as a consequence of different socialization practices. The available evidence supporting the subsistence of an adaptive relationship between the mothers economic responsibilities, child care practices and the childrens behavior includes consequences from the Six Cultures study documenting that women in simple cultures who have considerable economic responsibilities assign more chores to their children and seem to be more despotic in their work assignments than women in complex cultures who have few economic responsibilities (Nolan, Grant, Keady,   1996,   and Moen, Robison, Dempster-McClain, 1995). From a western perspective, assessment of the nature of the relationship between maternal employment and child rearing practices presumes special prominence because of distress over the consequences of womens work outside the home. Speculation as to the impact of maternal employment ranges from commentary on the optimistic aspects of work on womens self esteem to concern over the phenomena of latch key children who come home to an empty house in the afternoon (Twigg Atkin, 1994). To date, the evidence derived from experiential studies of Western families is ambivalent as to the overall positive and negative collision of maternal employment on children (Hochschild, 1997). Working mothers report assignment of more household responsibilities to their children and are stricter disciplinarians than nonworking mothers (Hochschild, 1997, 1989). Survey data on adolescents specify that both sons and daughters are better adjusted while the mothers are employed, although the study was primarily designed to explore the negative consequences of maternal employment on adolescents (Nolan, Grant Keady, 1996). Interviews with working and nonworking mothers of young infants have revealed working mothers to recognize less distress in their infants while separated from them and to be less apprehensive about the capability of other care takers (Morris, J. 1992). It has also been suggested, that some working mothers feel guilty concerning not being instantaneously available to their children and compensate by being generous, overprotective, and lax in discipline (Hoffman, 1974). These conflicting lines of evidence point to the requirement for additional information on the consequences of maternal employment on family functioning. Information on changes in childrens behavior instigating from shifts in socialization practices linked with maternal responsibilities assumes increased significance while considered in conjunction with changes in womens employment behavior. As of 1999, 50% of the mothers of school aged children living with their husbands were employed as almost forty percent of mothers of preschool children were employed (Pocock, 2001). It is generally recognized that economic circumstances and the cost of living will encourage, if not force, women to seek paid employment outside the home. The dramatic increase in number of women, mainly mothers of young children, who are joining the work force suggests the requirement for careful examination of the impact of mothers working status on mother-child interactions and ensuing child development. During the last three decades, particular social concern has been directed at the quality of day care provided for children when mothers have employment outside of the home (Pocock, 2001).. A woman who has had a career may be in a state of indecision about continuing to work after she has had a baby. In most families, availability of day care and economic considerations are the major factors impacting on the familys options. If the couple looks strictly at the economic aspects of work, the situation may seem bleak. The potential income the mother earns may get absorbed by the new expenses of child care. But her job may be a significant source of pride as well as money for her. It is to be hoped that her career provides her with personal satisfaction as well as economic benefits (McDonald, 2001). In most cases, the father and mother can take at least some parental leave from their jobs. If they decide that neither of them will take any extended period of time off from working, both should be involved in planning day care for the baby. If some responsible adult cannot be found to care for the child in the home, the mother and father should visit several alternative settings and talk to other parents using such facilities before making a decision. They may find a day-care situation close to where they work so that they can visit their child during the day. Parents should not feel that they have to settle for an institutional day-care center where babies and children may be treated as little more than parts on an assembly line (Hochschild, 1997). They can form a small baby-care cooperative with other parents-fathers as well as mothersso that their child will be cared for with more personalized attention and commitment. As a general rule, it is best for parents to take primary responsibility for the care of their baby. Ideally, parents should not be reticent about presenting their special needs to their employers. They should explain that they may need some time off or will want to work unconventional hours, or even bring the child to work with them occasionally. Many potential arrangements can be made to minimize the need for day care outside of the family. For example, both parents may work thirty-five hours a week, but if one goes to work two hours earlier than the other and comes home two hours sooner, most of the care of the infant can be managed without including other adults. Also, either or both parents may be able to spend part of their lunch hour with the child. A general consequence of the greater involvement of adult females in positions of social and political leadership is a lessening of the emphasis on women just being mothers (Morris, 1992). This is beneficial in relieving some of the enormous pressure on women to define themselves solely in terms of their parenting responsibilities. However, this redefinition of adult femininity can be destructive to the quality of family life if fathers are not involved partners in parenting. The fathers and mothers attitudes toward the womans role outside the family are crucial. If the mother wants to work, to continue her education, or to become more involved in endeavors outside of the home, it is important that the father views it as his responsibility to be positively involved with his children. Greater flexibility for mothers can benefit fathers in many ways. While the mother is gaining an opportunity to broaden her interests outside of the home, the father can have more of a chance for a one-to-one relationship with his child. On a more general level, men must be sensitized to the enormous need for more constructive paternal influence in our society. The danger of the wife subtly resenting the husbands increased involvement with their child is lessened because she is gaining a greater confidence in herself as a well-rounded person. There is a very low probability that a child will be harmed by spending less time with a previously full-time mother, assuming they still share a regular, ongoing relationship. In fact, the child can be greatly stimulated by periods of time getting to know each parent as an individual as well as by opportunities to function more independently of family influence (Twigg, Atkin 1994). The childs social development can be greatly facilitated by a caring, accessible and dependable father who fosters a sense of closeness, sharing and trust. The fathers positive family involvement assumes special significance in fostering social competence because he is apt to be the only salient male adult the child encounters on a day-to-day basis. Both boys and girls need to develop effective modes of social interaction with males as well as females. Children who have the benefit of being exposed to kind, considerate interactions between their parents are likely to have a solid basis for constructive male-female relationships. By conveying positive values about male-female relationships, the nurturing father can have an especially crucial role in supporting his sons and daughters capacity for intimacy. His encouragement of assertiveness, body pride and basic self-esteem increases the likelihood of his child having constructive relationships both inside and outside of the family. Although many interacting biopsychosocial influences are involved, the quality of fathering that individuals receive during childhood tends to be associated with their social competence, sexual adjustment and life satisfaction in adulthood. The earlier father-mother-child relationship is a significant factor in the adults personality functioning and capacity for success in marriage, parenting and work. 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