Most American mothers and fathers have jobs outside the home. They work overtime, evenings and nights. And in 6 million families, parents hold down 2 jobs while still trying to raise their children.
At the same time, 4 of 5 parents say their biggest worry is that they don't spend enough time with their children, a concern that is borne out by statistics showing that, on average, parents have cut the time they are with their kids by 22 hours a week since 1969.
These and other dramatic sociological changes may be a major reason for the declining educational achievements of many children, as well as the disturbing rise in children's behavioral problems.
"We know as a nation that we have a lot of children who are failing and that an overwhelming amount of research says that parental involvement matters in kids' outcomes," said Dr. S. Jody Heyman of the Harvard University School of Public Health.
Heyman's newest research shows that children whose mothers lack paid leave or flexible hours, which makes it hard to meet with teachers or deal with other school difficulties, are two to three times more likely to end up with reading, math and behavioral problems. Other studies show fathers' schedules create similar problems.
"What hasn't been done before is to look and ask, `do parents have the chance to help their kids?' " Heyman said.
"We talk about whether it's the fault of the parents or the fault of the schools, but for some reason we have totally ignored whether all parents have the chance to meet the needs of their children, or if only the privileged parents do."
The main problem is not the huge change in family dynamics, which has seen the vast majority of women enter the workforce between World War II and the 1990s. Children actually do better academically when their mothers have good jobs and the flexibility to take time off for their children's needs.
Women have always worked, but in the past it was in the home and on the farm with their children nearby. Fathers first started leaving the home for paid jobs with the start of the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago, and mothers followed 100 years later. But most businesses still act as though every family has someone at home to take care of the children and do all the other household chores.
"Our workplace operates as if it were 1930 and the worker is a man who has . . . a wife at home taking care of these kinds of problems," said Donna Lenhoff, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.
The profound changes in the workforce include:
- Seventy-eight percent of mothers with children work, as do 95 percent of fathers.
- Forty percent of women and men work either evenings or some other non-standard shift.
- Fifty-five percent of non-poor working women and men lack paid leave at least some of the time, and for poor workers, such as those formerly on welfare, it's 76 percent.
- People today work 10 hours more a week than they did a decade ago.
"The only way to keep families afloat these days is to become a hamster. You run harder and harder on a wheel but you still stay in the same place," said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, head of the National Parenting Association.
Schools also have failed to keep up with the changing times. They still operate on turn-of-the-century schedules, with classes from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and three months off for summer vacation--this despite the fact that most parents work until 6 p.m. or later and we no longer are an agrarian society that needs children to help with the summer harvest.
The result of these conflicting forces is an overall time famine for parents.
"The lack of workplace flexibility and other out-of-date workplace policies are contributing in a major way to the problems that are occurring among children today," Lenhoff said.
Some parents lose interest
The mismatch between work and school and parents also is contributing to the distressingly high percentage of parents who are losing interest in their children, said Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychologist.
In his study of more than 10,000 high school students, Steinberg found that between 25 percent and 33 percent of their parents had disengaged from their children.
"These parents did not know how their kids were doing in school. They never attended any school functions for parents. They didn't know who their kids' friends are . . . and they didn't know where their kids went after school," Steinberg said.
"Having parents who are involved in your life is probably the single most important factor in a kid's psychological adjustment," he added.
Children who are left alone at home after school, or whose parents do not closely monitor their activities, are the most likely to become involved with alcohol, drugs, delinquency and sex.
"This is a direct function of the lack of parental supervision," Steinberg said.