crossposted from
unbossed
All across America, every day at shift time, you will find working poor parents making a child exchange in the parking lot. Between the 2nd and 3d shift, the kids may be drowsing in their pajamas, left alone in the dark car for a few minutes while one parent scurries to punch in and the other is punching out. Day in and day out, the parents become strangers to one another as they sacrifice time together to put food on the table and make sure the kids are cared for.
Yes, in America, nothing is too bad when it comes to the working poor. Yes, these are our family values.
This is nothing new. I ran into it all the time decades ago. Stressed out, tired parents, strangers to one another trying to do their best on too little money and too little time.
A new study - Heather Boushey, Tag-Team Parenting - says nothing has changed.
Now, fewer families - 70 percent - have two parents, and among those only about a quarter have a stay-at-home caretaker. The increasing number of single parents and two earner couples has created more demand for services during nonstandard hours because family members must do all of their shopping and business when they are not at work, which is typically on evenings and weekends. It has also created increased demand for safe, affordable, and enriching childcare services, both at traditional and non-traditional hours.
Having a quality job that allows parents to have time for each other and for their children is important for marital stability and family happiness. However, compared to the past, today's families have more family members in the workforce, work longer hours, and are more likely to work outside of the traditional 9-to-5 weekday schedule (Presser 2003; Heymann 2000). Some families may choose to have spouses work alternating schedules so that the parents can each provide care for their children while the other is at work (Becker and Moen 1999). This "tag-team" parenting strategy is often employed by two-earner, married-couple families with children to cope with their work/family dilemmas. While this may limit spouses' ability to spend time together and cause problems within the family (Hochschild 1997; Hochschild and Machung 2003; Grosswald 2004), this may solve other work/family challenges.
Boushey's report explores the various reasons families work these hours and the strategies they use to maintain their families and jobs. She finds that tag-team parents are more likely to be poor and young - and unable to afford childcare. Some parents choose to work shifts that mean they can care for their children, because they cannot afford childcare. Some parents are forced to work shifts when no childcare is available.
The Children's Defense Fund studies tell us that quality, affordable, accessible childcare is a serious problem in this country. And it's not because childcare workers are rolling in the dough. They tend to be working poor themselves.
* Education is correlated with schedules. Husbands and especially wives who have less education are more likely to work evening and night shifts. Among mothers without a highschool degree, only 58.5 percent have a day shift and 14.9 percent work most of their hours in the evening. Those who have graduate degrees are most likely to work day shifts.
* Men in families where both spouses are African American are less likely to work day shifts, compared to men of other races, while women in mixed-race families are least likely among women to work day shifts.
* Workers in younger families are less likely to work day shifts, compared to workers in older families.
* Day shifts are more common among both husbands and wives in higher-income families, compared to lower-income families.
Overall, most people work a daytime schedule, but workers who are younger, less-educated, lower income and have young children at home are less likely than their counterparts to have a daytime shift.
The Study Concludes:
Tag-team parenting is a strategy employed by parents to help them balance work and family. We identify four possible kinds of tag-team parents: anti-childcare/pro-flexibility, odd hours, cost containers, and special needs. Overall, low-income families are more likely to tag-team parent than are high-income families, even once we account for other things that we know about the family. Thus, policymakers should be concerned about tag-team parenting because it may be at most a
second-best solution for working families. Families who are pushed into tag-team parenting must accept a day-to-day life where parents are not able to spend much quality time with one another. This clearly has implications for family life and family happiness.
However, even for families who "choose" tag-team parenting, policymakers should be concerned. If working alternating schedules is the best way for families to provide care, then there may be something wrong with our system of childcare or our workplaces. Parents need flexibility to balance work and family, but the solutions must create a workable day-to-day balance for families, which truly allows them to care not only for their children, but for themselves and their spouses as well.
These, sadly, are our family values.