Maternal Work Schedules and Child Wellbeing

• In Event: 1-177 - Socioeconomic Inequality and Children’s Development: Trajectories, Contributing Factors, and Policy Approaches

Integrative Statement

Gaps in school readiness explain about half of later disparities in school achievement and children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds start the farthest behind (Duncan & Murnane, 2011). To close gaps in school readiness, we need to better understand what factors produce those gaps. One understudied contributing factor to school readiness is the role of maternal employment, and in particular, how precarious maternal employment (unpredictable or uncertain work) is linked with child wellbeing. This is an important omission as precarious work, and variable work hours in particular (Finnigan 2018), has increased in recent decades (Kalleberg 2011) especially among economically disadvantaged groups (Kalleberg 2009) – where school readiness gaps are largest.

Although some research has examined links between non-standard work schedules and child wellbeing, this literature frequently overlooks volatility in work hours, or how changing shifts over time might be linked with school readiness. Instability in work not only likely affects economic wellbeing, but also childcare arrangements, mental health and may affect parenting, which in turn may impact children. To address this gap in the literature, the current study examines not only non-standard work schedules (and types of non-standard work), but also schedule changes and changes in the number of work hours both within and between jobs to better assess how work precariousness is linked with school readiness. I focus on the employment of low-income mothers during early childhood (ages 0-5) as maternal employment in early childhood has grown dramatically over the last several decades. In 1975, 39% of mothers with children under 6 were in the labor force, today that figure is 64% (BLS 2016). Not only is maternal employment in early childhood more common, but early childhood is also a critical developmental time period (e.g. Phillips & Shonkoff 2000), when important brain development and early learning occurs that is linked with later economic and academic success (Elder 1998; Heckman 2006; Hair et al 2015). Additionally, early childhood may be a particularly effective time for intervention (e.g. Carneiro & Heckman, 2002; Chetty et al., 2016).

Using unique employment calendar data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2011) a longitudinal birth cohort study of mostly low-income mothers, this paper examines whether work schedules and hours volatility (hours worked per week, changes in work schedules within jobs, change in work schedules over time, type of work schedules) are linked with school readiness (literacy, math and behavioral skills) using data over a 5-year period. Preliminary analyses suggest that an additional year of non-standard work is associated with more externalizing (marginal) and internalizing behavior and marginally lower Woodcock-Johnson scores (expressive language). However, in general, more years of work are linked with better school readiness outcomes for children. Average work hours during early childhood is not associated with outcomes and number of job hour changes is linked only with more externalizing behavior. Future analyses will explore types of work schedules, other measures of work, outcomes at ages 9 and 15, and other modeling approaches (individual fixed-effects, propensity scores, lagged dependent variables).

Author

• Natasha Pilkauskas, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author