Life/Work - Issue 31

For several weeks now, I've found myself returning again and again to the findings contained in a new book titled "Ask the Children: What America's Children Really Think About Working Parents" (William Morrow, 1999). Written by Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, the book is based on a work-family study of more than 1,000 children in grades 3 through 12, along with 600 of their parents.

Amazingly, this is the first time that a researcher has systematically explored with kids the issues that have prompted acrimonious debate among their parents for more than two decades. My interest in what kids have to say about their working parents is partly personal. My wife and I have both pursued demanding careers while raising two children: Kate, 18, and Emily, 14. But for all of our struggling over the issues of family and work, I had never asked either of my children many of the questions that Galinsky poses in her study. The reason, I realize now, is that I was afraid that their answers would fuel my guilt and break my heart. After reading "Ask the Children," I know that I'm not alone.

The book's findings are complex and sometimes contradictory. Galinsky finds hope in the evidence that working parents are devoting more cumulative time to their children than they did 20 years ago, primarily because fathers are becoming more involved. She takes it as a sign of progress that a large majority of both men and women now believe that a child can fare just as well if the man is the primary caregiver and the woman is the primary breadwinner.

Galinsky also takes heart in the fact that a mother's employment status is never predictive of the evaluation that her children give her on her parenting skills. Nor does the employment status of a mother affect how much time her children say that they spend with her.

There is also encouraging news in some of the kids' responses: Nearly 75% of the kids studied believe that their mothers handle work-family issues well, and 69% feel that way about their fathers. While they still generally feel better cared for by their mothers than by their fathers, a substantial majority give both parents an A when asked to assign grades in a dozen categories: "Being there for me when I am sick," "Raising me with good values," "Appreciating me for who I am," and "Making me feel important and loved."

But the more I grappled with Galinsky's statistics, the more disturbing I found them. For one thing, they reveal an often-gaping disparity between kids and their parents over the issue of how work affects the quality of parenting. The findings also suggest that parents often dramatically exaggerate the amount of time that they spend with their children, and that kids themselves underplay the toll that the lack of time with their parents takes on their lives. Finally, there is considerable evidence of a "spillover" effect: When parents feel stressed at work, their parenting suffers.

Nowhere is the disconnection between parents and children more achingly graphic than in one simple question that was posed to kids: "If you were granted one wish to change the way that your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?" Parents were asked to predict how their children would respond to this question. Nearly 56% of them assumed that their child's top choice would be to have more time together. In fact, only 10% of kids said that they'd like more time with their mothers, and only 15.5% said the same about their fathers. By contrast, 34% of kids said that what they want most is for their parents to be less stressed, or less tired, because of their work. Astonishingly, just 2% of parents guessed that this would be their child's highest priority.

I say "astonishingly" because stress and fatigue are familiar experiences to nearly every working parent. What parents seem to be unaware of -- or in denial about -- is the effect that their pressured lives have on their kids. Americans across the board are working longer hours than ever.

More to the point, a vast majority of working parents in the study reported that their jobs leave them with less energy to do things with their children. Both fathers and mothers acknowledged a higher tendency to withdraw from their kids whenever work becomes especially demanding. And kids themselves are acutely conscious of the quality of attention that they receive. They give high marks to parents who focus on them exclusively, and much lower marks to those who do not.

Equally disturbing is the evidence that parents may be deluding themselves about the actual amount of time that they do spend with their kids: 28% of dual-earner parents said that they play or exercise with their children every day, for example, but only a minuscule 6% of kids agreed that this is the case. Meanwhile, 36% of dual-earner parents said that they do homework with their kids either "five or six times a week" or "every day," but only 19% of kids concurred.