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When Mothers’ Work Matters for Youths’ Daily Time Use: Implications of Evening and Weekend Shifts

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Abstract

Drawing upon the work-home resources model, this study examined the implications of mothers’ evening and weekend shifts for youths’ time with mother, alone, and hanging out with peers unsupervised, with attention to both the amount and day-to-day consistency of time use. Data came from 173 mothers who worked in the long-term care industry and their youths who provided daily diaries. Multilevel modeling revealed that youths whose mothers worked more evening shifts on average spent less time with their mothers compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer evening shifts. Youths whose mothers worked more weekend shifts, however, spent more time with their mothers and exhibited less consistency in their time in all three activity domains compared to youths whose mothers worked fewer weekend shifts. Girls, not boys, spent less time alone on days when mothers worked weekend shifts than on days with standard shifts. Older but not younger adolescents spent more time hanging out with friends on evening and weekend shift days, and their unsupervised peer time was less consistent across days when mothers worked more evening shifts. These effects adjusted for sociodemographic and day characteristics, including school day, number of children in the household, mothers’ marital status and work hours, and time with fathers. Our results illuminate the importance of the timing and day of mothers’ work for youths’ daily activities. Future interventions should consider how to increase mothers’ resources to deal with constraints on parenting due to their work during nonstandard hours, with attention to child gender and age.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as part of the Work, Family, and Health Network, which is funded by a cooperative agreement through the National Institutes of Health: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U01HD051217, U01HD051218, U01HD051256, U01HD051276), National Institute on Aging (U01AG027669), Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (U01OH008788, U01HD059773). Grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (R01HL107240), the William T. Grant Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, and the Administration for Children and Families provided additional funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Soomi Lee

  2. Human Development and Family Studies, School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Kelly D. Davis

  3. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Susan M. McHale & Ann C. Crouter

  4. Work and Organization Studies and Institute for Work & Employment Relations, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Erin L. Kelly

  5. Krannert School of Management, Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Ellen Ernst Kossek

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  1. Soomi Lee
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Correspondence to Soomi Lee.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Consent forms were obtained from mothers and assent from youths.

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Lee, S., Davis, K.D., McHale, S.M. et al. When Mothers’ Work Matters for Youths’ Daily Time Use: Implications of Evening and Weekend Shifts. J Child Fam Stud 26, 2077–2089 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0731-7

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