Changes in the nature of work and family life are of vital interest to psychoanalysts because they form the context in which people live their lives.
My non-profit research organization, Families and Work Institute, is in a unique position to track U.S. trends because we conduct the largest ongoing nationally representative studies of the workforce, the National Study of the Changing Workforce, and of the workplace, the National Study of Employers.
Some of our findings are not surprising—that the workforce is more diverse and older—but others are. For example, women, now 48 percent of all workers, are better educated than men. Among employees 50 and younger, 32 percent of women have four-year degrees or more, compared with 23 percent of men. Furthermore, women in dual-earner families contribute 42 percent of their family's income. So clearly, working mothers are here to stay.
These changes in the demographics of the workforce run parallel to other changes in work itself—specifically that work hours have increased and jobs have become more demanding and hectic. The average woman now works more than 40 hours a week (that average includes the one woman in four who works part time). In addition, 46 percent of employees are contacted about work outside of normal working hours regularly or occasionally. Technology makes it possible to work any time, any place, and, as a result, the boundaries between work and family life are increasingly blurry.
Home life has changed too. There are more dual-earner couples (from 66 percent in 1977 to 78 percent in 2002). While women have not cut back on the hours they spend taking care of and doing things with their children, perhaps surprisingly men have increased their family time, especially younger fathers. If we compare Generation X fathers (between 23 and 37 years old when we conducted the 2002 study) with their Boomer counterparts (between 38 and 57), we find that Gen X fathers spend 1.2 hours more on workdays with their children than Boomers. This is true even when we control for the age of their children.
I also conducted the first nationally representative study of children's views of their working parents. There are five findings that would be of special interest to psychoanalysts:
In the study I asked children in the third through the twelfth grades: “If you were granted one wish that would change the way that your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?”
I also asked parents to guess what their children would wish. Most parents (56 percent) guessed that their children would wish for more time with them.
However, more time was not at the top of children's wish list. Only 10 percent of children made that wish about their mothers and 15.5 percent about their fathers. Most children wished that their mothers (34 percent) and their fathers (27.5 percent) would be less stressed and tired. By contrast, only 2 percent of parents guessed that their children would make that wish.
Does this finding mean that children do not care about time? No. Children care about parents being less stressed because they do care about the time spent together. Furthermore, I found that the more time children spent with their parents, the more positive they felt about the way they were being parented.
The fact that many people interpreted this finding as meaning that time is unimportant to children sends a signal that we as a country are stuck in the wrong debates. We tend to think in either/or terms: It's quality or quantity time. It's work or family. Even the word “balance” that is commonly used indicates an either/or mentality. If you give to one side of your life (work or family), then you are taking away from the other. The research does not support these views.
I asked children to assess how they were being parented on 12 parenting skills such as “raises me with good values,” “is someone I can go to when I am upset,” “spends time talking with me,” “appreciates me for who I am,” “provides family traditions and rituals,” and others. The study found no differences in the assessment given by children who have employed mothers (both full- and part-time) and those with mothers at home.
This result confirms several decades of research indicating that you cannot tell much about how a child will turn out simply on the basis of whether or not his or her mother works. Overall, what matters most is how children are parented—what values their parents have, whether the parents walk their talk, how they connect to their children, and whether the children are priorities in their parents' lives.
Ellen Galinsky, M.S., is the co-founder and president of the Families and Work Institute, a non-profit center for the study of the changing workforce, changing family, and changing community. She is the author of Ask the Children .
The national conversation that we have been having about work and family life focuses on mothers. Yet in finding after finding, the importance of fathers to children is very evident. For example, children were asked if they had too little, enough, or too much time with their mothers and fathers. Children were more likely to say that they had too little time with their fathers (35 percent) than with their mothers (28 percent).
When the public considers how parents' work affects children, discussion centers on how old the child was when the mother went back to work and how much time parents spend working each day. In my study, I developed a model to identify those aspects of jobs that matter. I found four job factors make a difference: 1) a job that keeps work demands within reason; 2) a job that permits employed parents to focus on their work while on the job (e.g., not too many interruptions and not being asked to multitask too much); 3) a job that is meaningful, challenging, provides opportunities to learn, and offers autonomy; and 4) a workplace environment with supportive relationships that help parents succeed at work and at home. Parents who work in these environments come home in better moods and have more energy for parenting.
I found that while three in five parents like their jobs a lot, only two in five children think their parents do. Many parents see work as competitive with their children, so they do not share much about their jobs. In addition, parents often come home and complain about work, without realizing that their words are a living laboratory for children to learn about the world of work.
What is the bottom line of my findings? Ask the children and include what they say in forming a picture of work and family life today.