The Impact of Caregiver Employment Experiences and Support on Adolescents’ Work Ethics.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between adolescent work ethics and caregiver support and employment experiences. For this study, 114 adolescents from a local High School and their caregivers completed questionnaires. The adolescent’s questionnaire contained questions on demographics, caregivers support, perceptions of optimism and pessimism toward employment, and work ethics. The caregiver’s questionnaire included questions on demographics, educational attainment, and employment situation, status and type. Caregiver support and adolescents’ perceived optimism toward employment had a significant relationship with adolescents’ work ethics, where more support was associated with stronger work ethics, affecting a considerable number of the work ethic dimensions. The caregiver employment variables had a lesser impact, where any significant outcomes showed a relationship with only one or two of the adolescents’ work ethic dimensions. Overall, the caregiver group that was identified as primarily mothers had a stronger effect on the adolescents’ work ethics than the other caregiver group of mostly fathers. These findings suggest that caregiver support and the perceived optimism adolescents have toward employment, when evaluating their caregivers’ employment experiences, have a stronger influence on adolescents’ work ethics than the caregiver employment situation, status, or type. The implications of these findings are discussed