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Project Overview

How do parent's jobs affect children's health and well being? What sorts of working conditions and policies help employed parents? What can employees, managers, workplaces and policy makers do to make jobs more parent and child friendly?

We already know that when people have jobs that give them some control over when and how they work, it is good for their own health and well-being. In this study we are looking at whether such conditions can also improve the well-being of other family members, especially children. What arrangements help employees with the pressures of managing work and family life? We are studying the workplace, employees who work there and their family members. It will help us understand what are truly family-friendly work practices and will inform how government, employers and trade unions improve the balance between work and family.

Project Aims

We aim to test the following two hypotheses:

1. That children's emotional and physical well-being are associated with their parents' work conditions; and

2. That this association is mediated by parental resources, parents engagement and parent-child tension.

That is, the research will collect information about families, and about the workplace as an organisation. An understanding of the workplace (using surveys, diaries, interviews and documents) will provide a contextual description of conditions, relations and processes at work, and how they interface with family life, parenting and health which will be assessed using answers to questions and non-invasive biological measures.

All the information collected will be kept strictly confidential, so employees who participate will remain anonymous and their privacy will be respected.