Job quality and inequality: Parents’ jobs and children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties

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Abstract

In the context of high and rising rates of parental employment in Australia, we investigated whether poor quality jobs (without security, control, flexibility or paid family leave) could pose a health risk to employed parents’ children. We examined the extent to which both mothers’ and fathers’ jobs matter, and whether disadvantaged children are more vulnerable than others. Multiple regression modelling was used to analyse cross-sectional data for 2004 from the Growing Up in Australia study, a nationally representative sample of 4–5 year old children and their families (N = 2373 employed mothers; 3026 employed fathers). Results revealed that when parents held poor quality jobs their children showed more emotional and behavioural difficulties. The associations with child difficulties were independent of income, parent education, family structure and work hours, and were evident for both mothers’ and fathers’ jobs. Further, the associations tended to be stronger for children in low-income households and lone-mother families. Thus job quality may be another mechanism underlying the intergenerational transmission of health inequality. Our findings also support the argument that a truly family-friendly job must not erode children’s health.

Section snippets

The nature of job quality

Our study considers parents’ jobs along an employment continuum ranging from good to bad quality, characterised by combinations of conditions (Grzywacz & Dooley, 2003). Job quality is therefore a broad concept classifying jobs across a range of conditions; following Green (2006, p. 9), we define job quality as those ‘sets of work features which foster the wellbeing of the worker’. According to Green (2006) the dimensions distinguishing good from bad quality jobs are skill, effort, control,

Data and sample

We tested hypotheses with data from the Growing Up in Australia, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a nationally representative study of children, with the main unit of analysis being the study child. Our study used survey data collected in 2004, for children aged between 4 and 5 years and their parents. Mothers and fathers each completed a mail-back questionnaire on their own health and wellbeing, and if employed, their work conditions. Primary caregivers (98% mothers)

Social patterning of job quality

Table 1 presents the proportions of employed parents by job quality category and shows clear gender differences. A third of fathers had good quality jobs, compared with less than a quarter of mothers. A sizable minority of parents (30.9% of mothers and 23.9% of fathers) worked in jobs in the two lower levels of job quality.

T-tests revealed job quality also varied across family type and household income. Lone mothers held inferior quality jobs (M = 2.69, SD = .06) compared to mothers in

Discussion

We investigated whether poor quality jobs pose mental health risks for employed parents and their children. Our study is among the first to test for intergenerational health linkages, finding that when parents’ jobs lacked security, control, flexibility or paid family leave, children aged 4–5 years had more emotional and behavioural difficulties. Further, this association with child wellbeing occurred when mothers or fathers worked in bad jobs, and although modest, shows an effect size

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0774439, and we thank our co-investigators Jan Nicholson, Michael Bittman, Sara Charlesworth and Bryan Rodgers whose ideas are foundational to this paper. Thank you to Emma George and Sharryn Sims for their help with data, editing and methods. We thank all involved in the Growing Up in Australia (LSAC) study. Growing Up in Australia was initiated and funded as part of the Australian Government’s Stronger Families and

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