When Your Parents Work |
|
|
|
|
||
|
The typical schoolchild today lives with two employed parents. Most mothers and fathers work because it is an economic necessity. Maintaining a family is expensive. A researcher at Ohio State University has estimated that the average middle-class two-parent family setting out to raise a child in 1990 can expect to spend about $140,000 to age twenty-three. The estimate for a lower-income family is about $70,000. The money is for food, clothing, housing, medical bills, and school supplies and does not cover a college education.
Some children find the two-job situation has benefits that have nothing to do with material goods. These teens understand the relationship between the level of income and the level of family stress. They say it is better for both parents to work than to hear them argue over money matters all the time and to worry about their divorcing. The stress that comes from facing heavy financial demands is clearly eased in most homes when the mother works. Even younger children have a sense of the role money plays in maintaining a stable home atmosphere.
Teens and smaller children want to understand what their parents do at work. When parents talk about their jobs, children get a mental image of how they spend their working hours. In a survey of fourth through twelfth graders, 87 percent knew what their fathers did for a living and 83 percent knew what their mothers did. Between 25 and 30 percent could not describe their parents' jobs.
Do you feel that your parents spend too much time at work? Eight out of ten teens interviewed believed that their parents placed more importance on being a good employee than on being a good parent. They said their parents always have something that must be done for work, that they stay late at work and work on weekends.
|
||