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AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL
ASSOCIATION
Public Policy, Work, and Families:
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APA Office of Public Affairs |
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The two-parent, single-wage-earner family that was idolized in 1960s sitcoms is becoming increasingly rare in real life, with nontraditional families redefining the statistical norm. A strong, loving family life is still central to most people's well-being and research shows that a supportive, quality home environment is pervasively related to positive outcomes for children and other family members. Children can develop equally well regardless of the employment status of their parents; the home environment is a far more important determinant of how children fare as they grow up because caring parents sacrifice their own personal time and find ways to adapt their schedules and their own needs to attend to their children's needs (Gottfried, Gottfried, & Bathurst, 2002). But, too often, contemporary families are feeling stressed as they negotiate the sometimes conflicting demands of paid employment especially with long hours and a hectic pace and home responsibilities. Low-wage workers are particularly vulnerable because they have fewer care options for family members, less disposable income to pay for help, especially child care, and less overall support. In thinking about work-family interactions, family composition and type of work are important variables for advancing our understanding of how work and family mutually influence each other.
Working Mothers
Even in families where there is a spouse, the unequal division of household work has been slow to change, with the result that women still do more of the housework and child care, even when spouses work approximately the same number of hours and the women earn more money than the men (Bond, Thompson, Galinsky, & Protas, 2003). Child care is still mainly women's work, and when men care for children, they are more likely to "help out," and less likely to assume the executive functions of knowing what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. When children are young or care needs are high (e.g., there is a disabled family member), women often want high-quality part-time and flexible work, which is rarely available (Hill, Martinson, & Ferris, 2004). This is especially a problem for working poor families who cannot afford to pay for care for a child or sick family member.
Working Fathers
More than 1.5 million single fathers are engaged in the difficult day-to-day tasks of raising children without the financial or emotional support of a spouse. Or, considered another way, a father heads one in every five single-parent households. Working fathers have the same access to paid family leave that working mothers do--in other words--almost none.
Some Trends
Other Family Types
Closely linked with step-parenting is the issue of cohabiting couples who are raising children together without the formal benefits of marriage. In 2000, there were 5.5 million unmarried couples who lived together in the United States, and these "cohabitors" represent 9% of all couples in the United States.
Older adults often assume the role of care recipient and caregiver. Older women, in particular, provide significant care for spouses with disabling conditions, as well as grandchildren. Currently, 2.1 million children are raised by grandparents alone. An abused or neglected child enters kinship foster care when a child welfare agency places the child with a relative and a court makes that relative responsible for the child's care. Close to a half-million children lived in kinship foster care in 2002.
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