Several decades of increases in the market employment of both single parents and married women mean that most American children now live in a household in which every parent works outside the house. Research on parental employment and child well-being generally focuses on the relationship between parents' work and transfers of parental time and money TO children. The relationship between children's work and their parents' employment receives less attention. Working parents may receive transfers FROM their children in the form of household labor. Thinking about children as workers challenges a model of children as recipients and suggests a rethinking of household transfers as exchanges.

In this analysis we use data from a longitudinal ethnography of low-income working families to examine patterns of intra-family resource. The goal is to describe the processes whereby families define and assign resources and responsibilities. What are the resources available to households? How much choice do parents and other household members perceive in how to allocate these resources? How do children see themselves vis-ŕ-vis household resources—are they (or should they be) net recipients, co-benefactors in an equal exchange, or net contributors to the household? Other key dimensions include household composition, employment of adults, number of younger siblings, youths' options outside of the household, and parent-youth relationships.

Thirty-nine children, ranging from infancy to 15 years old, were categorized in terms of what they give to and receive from other family members. Descriptors were determined based on the contributions made by each child to the household, such as chore work and sibling care, in relation to the resources the child receives. The amount of time a parent devotes to each child as well as monetary resources were considered. Children fall into six categories: Demanders who make claims on family resources without offering to contribute, recipient: whose receipts do not match their contributions; floaters who make few marked contributions or demands; exchangers, who contribute when they expect to be routinely compensated (directly or indirectly); contributors whose work in the household is not matched by what they receive back; and responsible contributors who actively demonstrate a sense of personal responsibility to promote the well being of the family and/or particular family members. Responsible contributors often play a parent-like role in caring for younger siblings.

Discussion focuses on the meaning of these patterns of household claims and contribution for the family as a whole and for the developmental well-being of the children. Children support their parents' employment. In some families, sibling care and extensive household responsibilities lead to an “adultification” process in which youths prematurely develop adult self-images and parents are reluctant to discipline. Practitioners who work with children from low-income families should be aware of the ways in which parents' work outside the house affects children's lives.