Parent–Child Activities, Paid Work Interference, and Child Mental Health

• Author: Anne Roeters,Kirsten van Houdt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12355
• Published date: 01 April 2019
• Date: 01 April 2019

A R Netherlands Institute for Social Research

K  H University of Amsterdam

Parent–Child Activities, Paid Work Interference,

and Child Mental Health

Objective: To examine the association between

child mental health and (a) the amount

of parent–child interaction and (b) the amount

of interference in that interaction due

to paid work.

Background: Although some research ndings

suggest children do not always benet from

being with their parents full-time, other studies

suggest it is important for children to have their

parents’ undivided attention.

Method: Analyses are based on the 2013 New

Families in the Netherlands dataset (639 fathers

and 849 mothers of school-aged children).Using

structural equation modeling (SEM), we ana-

lyzed how child well-being varied with the fre-

quency of parent–child activities and the amount

of interference due to paid work.

Results: Children demonstrated better mental

health when the frequency of father–child activ-

ities was higher and the amount of interfer-

ence due to work was lower. We found no

effects for mothers. Moreover, the association

Netherlands Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 16164,

2500 BD, The Hague, Netherlands (a.roeters@scp.nl).

© 2019 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley

Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Council on Family

Relations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License,

which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial

and no modications or adaptations are made.

Key Words: child well-being, family life, gender differences,

technology and families, work and family issues.

between the frequency of parent–child activi-

ties and child mental health was not moderated

by the amount of interference due to paid work

(neither for fathers nor mothers).

Conclusion: The ndings suggest that children

attach great importance to the psychological

availability of their fathers. We speculate that

children respond more strongly to their fathers

because their attention and involvement is less

taken for granted than that of mothers.

Implications: Given the intrusive nature

of smartphones and laptops in daily life, it

is crucial that parents, employers, and family

life educators understand how distractions dur-

ing parent–child time due to paid work can affect

children. With this knowledge, strategies to min-

imize unintended detrimental consequences

for children can be developed.

Modern ideas of intensive parenting cen-

ter on the idea that parent–child time (and

mother–child time in particular) is crucial for

the well-being of children (Hays, 1998; Milkie,

Kendig, Nomaguchi, & Denny, 2010; Milkie,

Nomaguchi, & Denny, 2015). Many studies on

parent–child time argue that joint time is bene-

cial because it signies parental engagement

(Lamb, 2000; Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean,

& Hofferth, 2001), helps children to establish

secure attachment relationships (Pleck, 2007)

and engage in increasingly complex social inter-

actions (Bronfenbrenner, 1986), fosters human

and social capital (Becker, 1981; Coleman,

1988), enables parents to transmit knowledge

and norms (Crouter, Head, McHale, & Tucker,

232 Family Relations 68 (April 2019): 232–245

DOI:10.1111/fare.12355