Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Background: Proponents of the 1996 welfare reform assumed that work would improve the lives of welfare recipients and their families, partly by changing their home environments. These changes included improved parenting practices, decreased maternal depression, and the establishment and maintenance of family routines. However, researchers have found that work does not directly lead to improvements in the home environment because of the challenges welfare recipients face in the work environment, including job instability, low wages, and long hours. Changing parenting practices and maternal depression have been extensively studied. But we know little about how low-income mothers' return to work impacts family routines (Chase-Landale & Pittman, 2002). Furthermore, existing studies do not systematically consider the influence of job characteristics, but only look at the general effect of work. This paper adds to existing welfare scholarship by answering three research questions. 1) Is there a direct relationship between work and the maintenance of family routines? 2) Does the low-wage labor market create conditions under which it is more difficult to maintain family routines? 3) Which work characteristics promote or hinder the maintenance of routines in families?

Methods: The study sample consists of 592 families from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS). L.A. FANS used a multi-stage sampling design to assess the effects of neighborhoods on children and families. The dependent variable in this analysis is the number of maintained family routines, which is operationalized as completing an activity at the same time per day at least five times per week. The maternal employment variables in this analysis are: wages, average hours worked per week, and job instability. I also included a dummy variable indicating whether the caregiver worked at a low-wage job to try to account for other work characteristics that were not explicitly measured (non-traditional hours, work complexity, etc.). The analysis also controlled for family and maternal characteristics. To address my research questions, I calculated both descriptive statistics and ordered probit models.

Results: The descriptive analysis reveals that regardless of wage, non-working caregivers maintain more routines than low-wage or higher-wage workers although this relationship is not significant. The multivariate analyses support this finding since work (compared to unemployment) is not a significant predictor of the number of maintained routines. However, the analysis also demonstrates that working in low-wage jobs, compared to higher-wage jobs, is not associated with fewer routines, as expected based on previous research. Lastly, the analysis shows that wages, average hours worked, and job instability are not significantly related to the maintenance of family routines.

Implications: This study calls into question one of the main assumptions underlying welfare reform. Work does not lead mechanically to positive family outcomes. Rather, the process of maintaining family routines is more complex than assumed by policymakers and by the results of previous studies. Based on this study, it seems that maternal and family characteristics are the most consistent determinants of the maintenance of routines in families.