Children's Cognitive Trajectories in the Context of Parental Work Schedules

Background and Purpose:

This paper investigates the relationship between parental work schedules (e.g., working evenings, nights, or early mornings) and children's cognitive trajectories from age 5 to age 14. This issue is important because a great number of parents work nonstandard shifts in order to share care responsibilities for their children. While many parents intentionally seek a nonstandard shift as a strategy to provide daytime or after-school care for their children, for many other parents, a nonstandard shift is not an option but a requirement of the job that can put pressure on work-family balance. Nonstandard schedules can facilitate or impede parent-child contact, which in turn has implications for children's well-being.

Particular attention is paid to whether parental monitoring, parent-child relationships, the home environment, and after-school activity account for some of the relationship between parental work schedules and children's cognitive trajectories. Special attention is also paid to the patterns of both parents' work schedules and to children living in single-mother and low-income families.

Methods:

This study utilizes longitudinal information on a large group of children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY79-CS). The sample consists of five cohorts of children born between 1982/83 to 1990/91, who were followed from birth to age 13/14. Approximately 7,000 children are available for analysis. Of these, 54% are non-Hispanic White, 26% are non-Hispanic Black, and 19% are Hispanic. The Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Math and Reading Recognition assessments are used to measure math and verbal achievement for children at ages 5/6 to 13/14.

We conducted growth curve modeling to examine children's cognitive trajectories by mother's shift work. To reduce potential omitted variable or selection bias, an extensive set of child, parental, and family characteristics that have been shown in prior research to be associated with family process and child development are controlled for in the models.

Results:

We found that nonstandard work matters to both children's initial scores and their trajectories, although those paths differ for math and reading and by the type of nonstandard shifts (i.e. evening, night, or variable shift). We found that having a mother who worked more years at a night shift was associated with lower reading scores, but that having a mother work more years at evening or night shifts was associated with reduced math score trajectories.

Conclusions and Implications:

Studies such as this one may increase awareness and understanding of the experiences families working nonstandard schedules have as they juggle family and work responsibilities and how the public as well as the government may respond to them. We find different implications of nonstandard work when it is undertaken “involuntarily” as well as stronger associations for some groups of children. Overall, we find a large degree of heterogeneity among parents working nonstandard shifts, which highlights the need for finer-grained analyses in future research. With so many families working nonstandard schedules, the way we respond to this challenge may have profound implications for children's well-being.