According to recent research, the way you feel about work affects the way you raise your child, and this can affect their development. Along with her colleagues, Maureen Perry-Jenkins, who specializes in developmental psychology, found that work that provides autonomy and support for parents, especially in the early years of a child’s life, can lead to better cognitive and social outcomes for children.

“People spend 40 hours a week at work, and that experience affects mental health, physical health, everything,” says Perry-Jenkins, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. All this changes, in turn, the way we behave with children. In particular, how understanding and receptive we are as parents. The results are presented in Perry-Jenkins’ book Work Matters.

Parents and low-income workers participated in the study

Those who study work-family relationships often focus on examining work hours, parental leave, sick leave, and overtime, rather than how work experiences affect parent-child relationships. The team led by Perry-Jenkins expanded their research into other, less well-known aspects.

They decided to include parents and low-income workers in their study. Stew Friedman, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, has found results similar to those of Perry-Jenkins among business professionals. About two decades ago, he and Jeff Greenhaus of Drexel University observed 900 workers: how these workers valued career and family, how much they distracted from work when they spent time at home, and how much control they had over their living conditions. work.

If parents are satisfied with work, children are happier!

They then checked how the children were doing using the Child Behavior Checklist, a tool used by professionals to identify emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents – anxiety, depression, aggression, social problems and attention problems. They found that when mothers and fathers see their work as a source of challenge, creativity and satisfaction, children do much better. Fathers whose work boosted their self-confidence and mothers whose work gave them a sense of authority also had mentally healthier children. The results of the study formed the basis for the development and development of Friedman’s Total Leadership program, which aims to help employees improve their performance in all areas of life, creating greater harmony among themselves. The idea that parents’ emotional experiences at work influence how they raise their children “isn’t that hard to explain if you think about it. It’s just that people don’t find time to think about these problems,” says Friedman, the author of the book “Parents who lead” and the initiator of the work-life integration project).

Study of 370 families

The Perry-Jenkins team followed 370 families through the birth of their first child, from birth to the first year of school. All participants were employed with low wages in positions such as nurses, catering workers, cleaners, beauticians, truck drivers, and manual laborers. Mothers and fathers who had a sense of control and efficacy at work in their child’s first year of life were more accepting and supportive of their parents and had children with better social skills and fewer behavioral problems. Workers who lacked a sense of autonomy at work were overreactive or withdrawn parents, and their children lacked social skills and exhibited behavioral problems. How fathers feel at work mattered as much to children as how mothers feel at work. “Literature and everything we have now is about mothers, mothers, mothers,” Perry-Jenkins said. “But how parents feel at work can also affect, positively or negatively, their children’s developmental outcomes. This is important because until now we have studied how work affects parenting style only from the perspective of mothers. Or it’s not just a women’s problem.”

In search of solutions

All parents love their children, Perry-Jenkins believes. “But it didn’t lead to a good upbringing. This did not ensure strong mental health. In fact, many people don’t say: I love my child, but there are things I can’t do for him because life is too hard.” Researchers found that employers could improve their relationships with employees if they were willing to make small adjustments to their work schedules. For example, Perry-Jenkins gave the example that instead of imposing inflexible schedules on employees, companies should allow them to pick up their children from school. These adjustments are easy to make if the bosses know the needs of the workers. “Most people can think of a way to do a better job and make the day better,” she said.

Asked how parents can better understand how work affects children, Friedman said the first step is to realize that “it’s impossible to completely separate personal and professional lives.”

There is always an overlap. Positive or negative. But it can be managed, he added, if parents focus on their children’s needs — being aware of their developmental needs and asking them what they expect when they grow up.

“When you know better, you can make better choices”

When parents learn what their children’s needs are, they can try different ways to balance work and family. For example, an employee might ask them to leave early in the evening a few times a week to solve problems outside the office, which will allow them to do their jobs better because they can solve problems at home. In a few weeks, the employee and the boss will decide how this experiment will go. “This way of asking the question is very different from the traditional work-life balance conversation, which is much more of a one-sided demand than an innovation that aims to make things better for all of us,” he said.

Millennials and the pandemic have changed the perception of the world

Most parents can’t quit their jobs, and they certainly can’t quit being parents. But they can look for ways to get help with work-life balance. And then, as Friedman suggests, look for other solutions.

Friedman believes that millennials (those born after 1990) face such problems in particular. “They want a different world and are working to create it.” And the pandemic of the past years caused many parents to reassess, the psychologist added. “And that has led to the need for new experiments, which in turn will lead us to new working models.”

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