It’s next to impossible to find a parent who believes that there are enough hours in the day.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 69.9 percent of American mothers with children under 18 work outside the home or telecommute, and according to the Pew Research Institute, 15 percent of adults in their 40s and 50s are financially supporting both an elderly parent and a child. These numbers indicate that many people are forced to juggle the inevitable tug-of-war between work and family demands.
A new study by researchers from several universities and institutions, “Changing Work and Work-Family Conflict,” sought to determine whether flexible work schedules can help ease this crunch.
The researchers randomly assigned information technology employees of an unnamed Fortune 500 company to two groups. The first group had a standard work schedule, whereas members of the second were allowed to set their own schedules — including the number of hours in a day in which they worked in an office and the number of hours that they worked from home. Researchers trained employee supervisors to demonstrate an understanding for the demands of the workers’ personal lives, and the supervisors led several meetings about the new, flexible schedules.
Those in the modified-schedule group reported modest but statistically significant decreases in work-family conflicts and improvements in having enough time for their life outside of work. The benefits were the strongest among workers who were members of “the sandwich generation,” those caring for both kids and elderly parents.
Researchers found that the employees in both groups worked a similar number of hours — no one was slacking at home or letting work completely overtake family life since the boundary between work and home had been erased. But the employees in the flexible-work group on average did increase the number of hours they spent working at home from 10.2 hours a week to 19.6 hours a week.
The authors conclude, “We provide the first experimental evidence that workplace interventions can reduce work-family conflict among employees and change work resources, specifically increasing employees’ control over the time and timing of their work and the support they receive from supervisors for their family and personal lives.”
Since there’s no way to add extra hours to the day, employers looking to keep their workers happy and less stressed should open their minds to flexible schedules.
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Tag: Family
How Jobs Give Low-Income Mothers More Than a Financial Boost
Are young children better off when their mothers stay home or when they go to daycare? It’s a question that has been hotly debated for decades and will likely never be settled, but a new study by Boston College researchers suggests that low-income kids with working mothers perform better in kindergarten than their counterparts whose mothers stay home.
The study, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, followed 10,700 children born in 2001, and found that when low-income mothers returned to the workforce before their babies were nine months old, their children performed better in standardized tests of reading, math and vocabulary in kindergarten. When low-income mothers returned to work when their kids were between 9 months and two years old, their children had fewer behavioral problems in kindergarten, according to teacher surveys.
Meanwhile, children of middle-income women showed no significant difference in behavior or cognitive abilities whether their mothers stayed home or not, and the kids of high-income mothers showed a slight decrease in ability when their mothers worked. Prior studies of kids born in the 80s and 90s had suggested some negative effects of childcare across all income levels.
Caitlin McPherran Lombardi, lead author of the study, told the American Psychological Association: “Different cultural attitudes, more readily available and higher-quality child care and more fathers participating in childrearing are other possible reasons for the difference.”
She also noted that continued employment seems to make a big difference in the low-income mothers’ lives too—58 percent of mothers in the study returned to work by the time their child was 9 months old.
“Most mothers today return to full-time work soon after childbirth, and they are also likely to remain in the labor market five years later, suggesting the employment decisions soon after childbirth are pivotal to determining mothers’ long-term employment,” she said. “Our findings suggest that children from families with limited economic resources may benefit from paid maternal leave policies that have been found to encourage mothers’ employment after childbearing.”
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One Key to Higher Test Scores? Affordable Housing
It’s no real surprise that research shows that affordable housing increases families’ health, security, and well-being.
And now, a new study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore discovered that another benefit: Kids that live in modest homes perform better on tests.
More specifically, “Families spending about 30 percent of their income on housing had children with the best cognitive outcomes,” Sandra J. Newman, the director of Johns Hopkins Center on Housing, Neighborhoods, and Communities, told Phys.org. “It’s worse when you pay too little and worse when you pay too much.”
The study, whose findings are reported in the Journal of Housing Economics and Housing Policy Debate found that when families used more than a third of their income to cover housing expenses — which was the case for 88 percent of the lowest-income families surveyed — they spent less on education boosters such as books, computers, lessons, and trips to museums and performances. The families that spent 20 percent or less on housing tended to live in distressed neighborhoods where the instability impacted the kids’ cognitive performance.
“The markedly poorer performance of children in families with extremely low housing cost burdens undercuts the housing policy assumption that a lower housing cost burden is always best,” Newman said. “Rather than finding a bargain in a good neighborhood, they’re living in low-quality housing with spillover effects on their children’s development.”
When families saw the percentage of income they had to pay to cover their housing decrease, the money they spent on their kids’ enrichment increased. “People are making trade-offs,” study researcher C. Scott Holupka told Phys.org, “and those trade-offs have implications for their children.”
MORE: These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, And These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems.
Father Knows Best: Game Changers Share Their Favorite Advice From Dad
Father’s Day didn’t become an official national holiday until 1972, but fathers have, of course, been influencing their children for generations. This year, NationSwell surveyed some of the country’s most innovative trailblazers from a range of fields — including government, technology and nonprofits — to learn how fathers have inspired their lives and vision for renewing America. By turns powerful, touching and hilarious, they share both the professional wisdom and personal takeaways that continue to motivate them to this day.
“‘You should buy a computer.’ That was 1987. Purchasing the computer was my ticket to getting hired at SXSW in 1989; they didn’t have one and I did. So that advice was what launched my career with this organization. Of course, at the time I thought my dad’s input was crazy — and it took me about six months before I took what he said to heart. Dads are often a bit ahead of the curve that way.” — Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW Interactive Festival, the annual technology and innovation gathering in Austin, Texas
“‘Focus your career on what you think is one of the greatest problems you see in the world.’” — Ethan Brown, CEO and founder of Beyond Meat, a company focused on improving health and lowering the impact of climate change by reducing 25 percent of global meat consumption by 2020
“‘Be a voice and not an echo. Never compromise your principals.’” — Janice Buckley, founder and president of Heartbeat — Serving Wounded Warriors, a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance and therapy to veterans and their families
“My dad was a WWII veteran. He came back from the war and was able to benefit from the GI rights… One of his sayings was ‘hope for the best and work for it.’ He, like a lot of folks during that time… was a hard worker and felt you couldn’t take anything for granted. He would tell me and two brothers, ‘changed labor is as good as rest,’ which meant once you finish one job, you’re rewarded with another job.” — Pat Quinn, governor of Illinois
“I remember my father always reminding me that there is someone better than you, so be yourself and do your best. This taught me early on to be humble and not get too carried away with becoming like someone else.” — Brian Preston, founder of Lamon Luther, a home furnishings company that teaches carpentry skills to homeless men and women with the goal of preserving traditional American craftsmanship
“It was part of my parents’ purchase of an Apple IIe computer. He [my dad] said, ‘Play all the games you want,’ knowing that playing the games on the computer he purchased meant rearranging the operating system so that it, and the game I wanted to play, would fit in the narrow confines of the 64KB of RAM the computer contained. It often took me days or weeks to figure out how to ‘play’ a game. That led to a successful career in technology.” — Dirk Wiggins, founder of Code for Progress, a year-long program that helps people solve issues of social inequality by teaching them to code
“‘There is no substitute for hard work.’ My dad was the first person in my family to go to college, paying tuition while sleeping on his grandmother’s couch. He was determined to become a doctor and recognized that hard work and perseverance were the only ways to get there.” — Dave Gilboa, co-founder of Warby Parker, an innovative eyeglass company that embraces a buy-one, donate-one philanthropic philosophy
“‘You can’t go wrong by doing right.’ I’ve found this particularly meaningful in elected office because I make decisions based on what is right, even if it isn’t always politically expedient or popular.” — Sly James, mayor of Kansas City, Mo., named as an innovative mayor in 2012 by Newsweek/Daily Beast for his work in boosting economic development in his city, which has been dubbed a “Silicon Prairie”
“My dad taught me to be part of the solution to improve the lives of those around me. If you can change one person’s life, it’s like changing the world.” — Daniel Lurie, CEO and founder of Tipping Point Community, an organization in San Francisco that works to reduce poverty by awarding grants to the most effective nonprofits
“I am not sure that my father gave me explicit advice. His advice was through action. He was a teacher during the day, then he would come home and run his own business. He was a sub-distributor of Coca-Cola and a beer brand in our little town in Mexico. Whenever any of his clients needed product he would immediately get it to them. He became my model on how to respect people, provide immediate reaction and be proactive in understanding their needs.” — José de Jesús Legaspi, president of the Legaspi Company, a real estate firm in California that has converted 10 declining properties into cultural centers catering to underserved Hispanic families throughout the state
“My dad had two daughters and he told each of us to marry millionaires — and give him half.” — Maggie Lockridge, president and founder of Rebuilding America’s Warriors, a nonprofit that provides free reconstructive surgery to wounded service members and veterans.
The Bicycle Is Not Just for Exercising Anymore
The summer slide isn’t a piece of playground equipment or even a toy at the local town pool.
While it sounds like something fun, it’s anything but that. Rather, the summer slide is something that parents need to fight against during these warm months.
The summer slide is the well-documented decrease in reading ability that occurs when kids don’t engage in learning over the summer. When children take a break from reading, their abilities recede and as that loss compounds over the years, some kids are left years behind their actual grade level.
To combat the summer slide, one community is looking to a bright yellow bicycle for answers. The city of Longmont, Colorado is launching a book-bicycle-centered outreach effort to try to reach kids whose parents don’t bring them to the library. Friends of the Longmont Library funded the $6,000 BookCycle that features a bubble machine and handle-mounted pinwheels, as well as a cargo hold for dozens of books and a Wi-Fi station that anyone can use.
Library employees will pedal the BookCycle to public events this summer, where they will host story times; they’ll also have the ability to make library cards on the spot. “We’re hoping the mobility will allow us to reach underserved areas and bring the books straight to them,” Elektra Greer, head of Longmont Library’s children and teens department, told Whitney Bryen of the Longmont Times-Call.
People in this Rocky Mountain community can expect to find the BookCycle at the farmer’s market, free public concerts, the First Friday Art Walk on Main Street, and many other events.
Now the librarians just need to learn to steer it — which can be difficult when the BookCycle is loaded up with books. So in preparation for pedaling season, the staff is taking lessons from Longmont Bicycles.
With any luck, they will return to the library from each of their outings with an empty BookCycle, leaving behind many kids with their noses buried in books.
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Dads, Let Your Daughters See You Wash the Dishes
Who would’ve guessed that men doing housework could help determine your child’s success?
Alyssa Croft, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychology, conducted a study whose results will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science. The findings? Girls who see their fathers pitching in on house chores — i.e. washing the dishes — are more likely to aspire to non-traditional careers like scientists or business leaders.
The researchers interviewed parents asking about their beliefs in gender roles and how they divided chores around the house. They also spoke with daughters about gender roles and what careers they could see themselves having in the future.
Croft found that the mothers’ and fathers’ ideas about gender roles did influence their daughters’ beliefs, but that a stronger predictor of what the girls wanted to be as adults was the division of domestic labor at home.
The daughters responded according to the dads’ actions, not their words. Girls with fathers who didn’t help with household chores were more likely to want traditional female careers such as stay-at-home-moms, teachers, nurses, or librarians. Those who saw their fathers helping clean, cook, and watch the kids dreamed of a broader set of jobs that were often higher-paying than those in woman-dominated fields.
“It’s very important for fathers to not only talk the talk about gender roles, but also to walk the walk, because their daughters seem to be watching.” Croft says in a YouTube video explaining the study.
“Despite our best efforts to try to create workplace equality, women remain severely under-represented in leadership and management positions,” Croft told the Association for Psychological Science. “This study is important because it suggests that achieving gender equality at home may be one way to inspire young women to set their sights on careers from which they have traditionally been excluded.”
So moms, let the dads clear the table tonight. Your daughter will thank you for it in the future.
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States Are Working to Keep Seniors on Their Feet
$67.7 billion.
That’s the anticipated cost of medical bills due to falls among the elderly by 2020, estimated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Falls aren’t just catastrophic for seniors because of the expense. According to the American Recall Center, one in every 200 falls in people ages 65 to 69 and one in 10 falls in people over the age of 85 causes a hip fracture. Of those with broken bones, 25 percent die within six months. As a result, elderly people are often so afraid of falling that they cease engaging in activities that were once important to them.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, as a variety of programs across the country are focusing on fall prevention.
Back in 2011, the CDC gave the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health a $1.5 million grant to study the effectiveness of fall prevention programs. They found that two programs sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Aging — Healthy Steps for Older Adults, a four-hour workshop, and Healthy Steps in Motion, an eight-week exercise class — reduced falls by 17 percent.
Another such program is the one offered by Wichita State University in Kansas. There, researchers assembled the Falling Less in Kansas toolkit, a free downloadable guide that allows seniors to assess their risk of falls and make necessary changes to prevent them.
The state of Ohio is also trying to prevent falls among seniors with an online program called Steady U. The website advises people how to arrange their houses to prevent falls — including tips such as keeping stairways clear, rugs securely attached to the floor, and adding night lights.
“We know that falls are the leading cause of injuries, ER visits and death,” John Ratliff, the Ohio Department of Aging’s Assistant Chief of Communications and Government Outreach told Hilary Young of the Huffington Post. “Coupled with the fact that our population is rapidly aging, it’s our responsibility to try new, innovative approaches to education about fall prevention to help our elders.”
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A Safe Childcare Option for Low-Income Parents Working the Night Shift
It’s hard enough to find high-quality, affordable childcare. But when you work the night shift, as many low-income mothers and fathers do, it can be an insurmountable challenge.
Fortunately, for parents living in Chillicothe, Ohio, there’s an answer: An overnight childcare center.
The Carver Community Center is partnering with Goodwill Industries to expand its daycare services to offer childcare around the clock. Justine Smith, the director of the center, told Dominic Binkley of The Colombus Dispatch, “There are a lot of second- and third-shift jobs available in Columbus. (Parents) are more than happy to drive to Columbus for work, but when it comes to child care, they’re kind of stuck.”
As middle-class parents can attest, the cost of childcare isn’t cheap. (A recent report showed that childcare has become more expensive than college tuition in 31 states.) However, the Carver Community Center manages to keep prices low — most parents pay only $55 to $130 a week — through donations, grants, and support from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Some families that are especially needy only contribute a co-pay of a few dollars.
Still, even if the childcare is affordable, it has to be offered during the hours that parents can actually use it. The Carver Community Center’s rare nighttime hours will allow many parents keep their jobs and not depend on inconsistent or unsafe overnight care for their kids.
Currently there’s a waiting list for night care at the center. “I can honestly say I hate to turn a child away,” Smith told Binkley. “If somebody gave me $1 million, then I would have every kid in the world in this place, but I’ve got to look at the funding.”
For the families that the center is able to help, however, the security that comes with knowing their children are well cared for while they work is priceless.
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These Teen Newcomers Help Fellow Non-English Speakers Adapt
Immigrant children often help out their parents in ways most American kids could never imagine — serving as interpreters in interactions with English speakers and helping to make sense of bills and forms.
High school senior Yuling Chen is one such kid. Five years ago, Chen came to the United States with her family from China. Since arriving in America, she has always helped her family with the language that she was quicker to pick up. “When I go home, they all hand me a big stack of letters to read,” she told Chris Burrell of The Patriot Ledger.
But she doesn’t mind. “When I first came to the United States, my English wasn’t so good at all, and I wanted to help (the elderly) with their lives,” she said. Chen is one of a group of 235 Asian immigrant teenagers in Quincy, Massachusetts that are taking this assistance to the next level, volunteering to help elderly immigrants at Quincy Asian Resources.
Along with the other teens, Chen teach seniors how to use computers, help middle school students making the transition to America, and assist at the Lunar New Year party and August Moon Festival, among many other duties.
Peter Tam, a Quincy native, first came to the center in 2007 as an AmeriCorps volunteer; now he directs the youth programs, involving volunteers from both of Quincy’s public high schools. “We’re really looking to create the next generation of Asian-American leaders and recent immigrant leaders in the community,” Tam told Burrell.
To thank the teens for their hard work, Quincy Asian Resources awarded seven of them, including Chen, a college scholarship worth $1,000.
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This Non-Profit is Making Sure Kids of Fallen Heroes Can Go to College
Funding a college education can be a difficult proposition for anyone, but for children of parents who died while serving in the military, it can be downright daunting. According to the Jacksonville, Florida-based nonprofit Children of Fallen Patriots, 15,000 American children have lost a military parent over the past 25 years. Now, the foundation is on a mission to identify as many of them as possible and offer them help paying their college bills. So far they’ve found 5,218 of these students, and paid $7.5 million toward their college educations.
“Our focus is on military children who have lost a parent in line of duty or any related deaths, like PTSD suicide or illnesses from exposure launch,” Army veteran David Kim, the founder of Children of Fallen Patriots, told Helena Hovritz of Forbes. “When government benefits don’t come through, we step in and pay for what they need.”
Hovritz writes that before Daniel Richard Healy’s final deployment, he told his son Jacob Centeno Healy that what he most wanted was for him to go to college. When Senior Chief Petty Officer Healy died, Jacob didn’t know how he could pay for college. “The VA wouldn’t provide benefits to me because they didn’t recognize me as my dads’ son,” Healy told Forbes.
So Fallen Patriots stepped in and funded Jacob Healy’s education. Now he works as a program administer for the organization, helping other people who’ve lost parents in the military find all the scholarships and government aid available to them, and covering the rest of the costs with funds from the nonprofit.
On this Memorial Day, Children of Fallen Patriots reminds us that we owe our fallen heroes so much. They gave our country their parents: the least we can do is provide them with a college education.
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