Labor Force Status, Transitions, and Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Stress: Direct and Cross‐Spousal Influences
| Author | Brendan Churchill,Lyn Craig |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12540 |
L C B C University of Melbourne
Labor Force Status, Transitions, and Mothers’ and
Fathers’ Parenting Stress: Direct and
Cross-Spousal Inuences
Objective: To investigate relationships between
parenting stress and the labor force status
and transitions of fathers and mothers, including
cross-spousal effects.
Background: Parenting is a demanding role,
which can be stressful depending on access
to resources and support. Relationships between
employment and parenting stress vary by class
and gender, but little is known about the effect
of transitions—short-term changes—in labor
force status.
Method: Using nationally representative lon-
gitudinal data from the Household, Income
and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey
(n=4,387 mothers and 4,033 fathers with
children younger than age 17) and xed effects
modeling of data over 15 waves, the study exam-
ined relationships between parenting stress and
mothers and fathers labor force status and
transitions between full-time work, part-time
work, and being out of the labor force.
Results: Mothers report higher parenting stress
when they are employed part-time. For both
mothers and fathers, having a nonemployed
partner is associated with lower parenting
stress, but a partner’s transition to this status is
associated with higher parenting stress.
*School of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, 3010 Australia
(brendan.churchill@unimelb.edu.au)
Key Words: employment, family stress, parenting, spouses,
transitions.
Conclusion: Both mothers and fathers nd
parenting stressful, and this can be compounded
by their employment situation, especially
for mothers. Cross-spousal linkages are also
important, notably that having a partner not in
the labor force is associated with lower parent-
ing stress for employed parents of both genders
and is likely because care can be delegated to
the home-based parent.
I
There is concern regarding the welfare of fam-
ilies in time-pressured modern economies
(Dinh, Strazdins, & Welsh, 2017). The entry
of women into the paid workforce during the
past half-century led to signicant changes in
the Western family, with most children now
growing up in dual-earner households (Bianchi,
Robinson, & Milkie, 2006; Coltrane & Adams,
2007; Jacobs & Gerson, 2004). Despite this,
there is evidence that parents now devote more
time to child care than in the 1960s, when most
mothers were full-time homemakers (Bianchi
et al., 2006; Giminez-Nadal & Sevilla Sanz,
2011; Sayer, 2016). The time pressures gen-
erated by family demand are particularly high
when children are young and their care needs
are most pressing (Bianchi et al., 2006). The
early parenting years are also when nancial
pressures are high and frequently coincide with
the necessity to begin establishing a career,
so it is a crunch point when household time
and money resources are particularly stretched
Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (April 2019): 345–360 345
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12540
346 Journal of Marriage and Family
(Jacobs & Gerson, 2004; Kleiner, 2014). What
are the implications of employment for parents’
emotional well-being and feelings that they
successfully meet the demands of their family
role? In this article, we investigate how the
labor force status and transitions of fathers
and mothers relate to the subjective stress of
parenting.
P S
Parenting is complicated and demanding. The
responsibilities are varied, including meeting
children’s material requirements, such as for
food, housing, and security as well as their emo-
tional and psychological needs such as attention
and affection (Avison, Ali, & Walters, 2007;
Deater-Deckard, 2004). For some, the demands
can feel very taxing, creating an associated
subjective reaction that has been described as
“parenting stress” (Pearlin, 1983, p. 243). Theo-
retical approaches to parenting stress have been
informed by role strain theory (Nomaguchi,
Brown, & Leyman, 2017; Nomaguchi &
Johnson, 2016). Role strain is described as
on-going or enduring “hardships, challenges
and conicts, or other problems that people
come to experience as they engage over time in
normal social roles” (Pearlin, 1983, p. 8). Par-
enting stress is usually conceptualised as a form
of role overload whereby a parent perceives that
the role demands exceed their capacity to meet
them (Anthony et al., 2005; Halpern-Meekin
& Turney, 2016; Harmon & Perry, 2011), but
role strain can also take different forms. Some
individuals may experience “role captivity” in
which they would “simply prefer to be and to
do things outside the connes of the [current]
role” (Pearlin, 1983, p. 245). Strain also might
occur due to interrole conict between sets of
complementary roles, such as mother–father or
parent–child relationships or from incompatible
demands of multiple roles, such as work and
family. Strain may also occur when roles sets
change and this “role restructuring” causes
stress (Pearlin, 1983, p. 245).
Whatever its aetiology, parenting stress is
deleterious for families. Research has shown that
it is associated with poorer developmental and
behavioral outcomes for children (Creasey &
Jarvis, 1994; Deater-Deckard, 2004), family
relationship quality (Crnic, Gaze, & Hoff-
man, 2005), and mothers’ well-being, mental
health, and life satisfaction (Avisonet al., 2007),
attachment to children (Harmon & Perry, 2011),
and parenting quality (Crnic et al., 2005). Par-
enting stress involves multiple components,
such as feeling overwhelmed by the responsi-
bilities, feeling trapped and exhausted, nding
parenthood more work than pleasure, and expe-
riencing strains in the parent–child relationship
(Abidin, 1992; Anthony et al., 2005). Stress
manifested as adverse psychological reactions
can be experienced as negative feelings about
the parent themselves or about their offspring
(Deater-Deckard, 2004).
Parenting Stress and Gender
Raising children is stressful for most parents, but
research suggests it is especially so for mothers
(Buddelmeyer, Hamermesh, & Wooden, 2017).
Reecting this, there is a substantial literature
on maternal parenting stress, but relatively little
equivalent research on fathers. Research on
fathers and parenting stress tends to focus on
their role in ameliorating mothers’ parenting
stress (Harmon & Perry,2011; Nomaguchi et al.,
2017). This is likely because historically moth-
ers have been the primary caregivers, and the
role of fathers has been mainly seen in relation to
“their ability to procure resources and services
that served to shelter mothers from parenting
stress” (Harmon & Perry, 2011, p. 176). Despite
increased female workforce participation, men
and women still experience the demands of work
and family in contrasting ways, with women
doing the bulk of child care and housework
and men devoting longer hours to paid work
(for an overview, see Bianchi & Milkie, 2010).
Social meanings and expectations attached to
employment and to family work differ by gen-
der (Ferree, 2010; West & Zimmerman, 2009).
Family functioning and children’s well-being
is seen more as a reection on women’s com-
petence as a “wife and mother” than men’s
competence as a “husband and father” (Bianchi,
2000, p. 95). Thus, the research concentra-
tion on mothers aligns with attitudes that they
are more responsible for hands-on parenting
than fathers.
However,fathers have become more involved
in active child care over time (Bianchi & Milkie,
2010; Buddelmeyer et al., 2017). A “new
father” ideal (Hook & Wolfe, 2012; Pleck &
Pleck, 1997) has seen fathers more engaged
in children’s lives. Changes in ideas about
what constitutes the proper care of children
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