Dynamics of parental work hours, job insecurity, and child wellbeing during middle childhood in Australian dual-income families

This study examines the relationship between parental employment characteristics and child well-being during middle childhood in Australian dual-earner families. Parental employment provides important resources for children’s wellbeing, but may also be associated with variations in parental time availability, parental stress levels and wellbeing, differences in parenting styles and variations in household dynamics. Further, there may be gender differences in how mothers’ and fathers’ employment characteristics relate to child wellbeing, as well as variations by age. Our study contributes to existing research by 1) examining longitudinal data that enables us to examine changes in the association between parental work hours, job insecurity and child wellbeing, within and across parent-child relationships; 2) focusing on dual-employed households to examine the effects of mothers’ and fathers’ employment characteristics on girls’ and boys’ wellbeing; and 3) testing possible mediators in the relationship between parental employment characteristics and child well-being. Drawing on 3 waves of data from two cohorts of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 3,216), from 2004 to 2012, we find that mothers who work long hours on average over the study period have children with poorer socio emotional development, while fathers with increasing work hours have children with poorer socio-emotional development. Mothers’ job security is associated with better child development comparing both across mothers and within mothers over time. We find little evidence that these associations are mediated by parenting style or work-family balance, suggesting further research is needed to understand the mechanisms linking parental employment with children’s outcomes