Maternal Unemployment Patterns and Risk and Protective Factors for Child Abuse and Neglect

Background

A substantial literature suggests that abuse and neglect may have differing etiologies, with neglect more closely linked to poverty. The high and sustained rates of child neglect over the last 30 years indicate that standard interventions may not be working to aid parents in providing safe, consistent supervision and care in situations involving neglect. A growing body of work has sought to identify economic and social policy levers that may decouple the link between financial hardship and neglect. Although a small literature has examined the association between unemployment rates and individual or county-level child maltreatment (Brooks-Gunn, Schneider, & Waldfogel, 2013; Brown & D Cao, 2020; Frioux et al., 2014; Nguyen, 2013; Raissian, 2015; Schneider et al., 2017), little work has examined the associations between an individual parent’s length, periodicity, or chronicity of unemployment and the risk for child maltreatment. This is significant, because unemployment is perceived as a uniform experience, yet we know little about how different types of unemployment may differentially increase or decrease the risk for child maltreatment.

Methods

Data come from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study of largely low-income families in 20 U.S. cities. The study draws on the baseline, 3- and 5-year surveys, and the employment calendar survey (n=2,052 at year 3; n= 1,984 at year 5). We use four measures of maternal work: (1) employment status categorized as full-year employment, no employment within a year, or any short-term unemployment in a year; (2) labor market status categorized as full-year employment, unemployed and seeking work, or non-participation in the labor market; (3) total number of days not working during a year; and (4) number of occurrences of job loss in a year. We measure two aspects of neglect: (1) supervisory/exposure; and (2) physical (Font & Berger, 2017). Logistic regression analyses of child maltreatment on maternal work were conducted.

Results

Approximately 42% of mothers with a 3-year-old child had full-year employment, 30% had not-worked spells, and the remaining 28% never worked within the year. At year 5, full-year employment increased to 50%, and the proportion of mothers who never worked decreased to 20%. Preliminary findings indicate that long-term unemployment is a significant risk factor for child abuse and neglect. Similarly, although a single spell of short-term unemployment is not associated with an increased risk for child maltreatment compared to full-time work, repeated short-term unemployment, and higher occurrences of job loss are associated with increased risks comparable to those of long-term unemployment.

Conclusions

Findings from this work suggest that frequent short-term unemployment, frequent job loss, and long-term unemployment may increase the risk for child maltreatment, and child neglect in particular. Social policies designed to provide financial assistance through work-based pathways should consider the influence unemployment and employment instability may have on the risk for abuse and the risk for neglect and the supports parents need to provide safe and consistent care while employed.