Working Parents: More Engaged With Kids
Are working parents more engaged with their children than their stay-at home counterparts? No! Of course not! Your parenting conscience shouts that at you when you read that sentence. Most of us believe that it is better for a child to have a stay-at-home parent and that will lead to a more effectively raised child.
But what if that’s not true? What if in many cases a child is better off with more engaged working parents than with a stay-at-home parent? Let’s examine that.
Having a stay-at-home parent, I’m sure, is wonderful for a child. Think about it. You’ve got someone to play with you, or essentially help you with your job, because, as Piaget says, playing is your work. You’ve got someone there to talk with you so you can develop your communication skills. You’ve got someone there to feed you so you don’t go hungry. You’ve got someone there who loves you, to give you that crucial love you need as a child. Then again, on the con side of things, you’ve got someone who is likely very tired, and, we’ve got to say it, maybe a little displeased to have such a lack of adult contact throughout the day. Stay-at-home parents, admit it, sometimes you just want a break. You love your child, nobody doubts that, but there are times when you would just prefer not to be around your child because you’re around them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Many times, there are stay-at-home parents who don’t just stay at home, stay at home, and stay at home day after day. But, after a while, they get a bit desensitized to their child, so when a child brings home a finger painting for kindergarten, and it looks just the same as the finger painting that they have brought home every day for the last three weeks, you’re probably not going to be very excited. But, just for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re a working parent, maybe even part-time, but you’re at work sometimes. You think of ways for your child to connect with others while you’re at work, perhaps other adults, or maybe other children, whatever you decide. You’re at work. You feel slightly guilty that you’re not around your child all the time when they need you, you miss your child a lot, even though it may be for only a few days a week. You miss your child and feel guilty because you’re gone, it’s not that they’re gone, but you’re gone.
Well, your child brings you a crappy piece of artwork, which to you looks like a Picasso. You think it is invaluable and awesome and priceless, you’re going to be excited. Is it possible that you are going to be more excited about that seemingly insignificant piece of artwork as a working parent than your stay-at-home counterpart? Is it possible that that guilt or that extra adult contact and that fulfillment outside of the home is going to light a fire under you in connecting with your child, in being engaged with you child, in making you more there for your child in other ways, like appreciating the work they bring home, or wanting to spend more time with them? For example, making sure you sit down to a family dinner, because that’s important and the only time you have. Whereas if you’re a stay-at-home parent, you’ve had all day. If your family wants to sit and eat in front of the television, you may say, go ahead. Not all stay-at-home parents are like that, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to get a bit burnt out.
Everybody gets burnt out, and raising a child is the hardest job that there is. There are some very difficult jobs out there, but that old adage remains true, there is no work harder than the work of a parent. It may be possible that a working parent is slightly more engaged. Now, we may not want to admit it, but if we’re being honest, for our children, it may be possible. Now of course, if you believe that a child should have a stay-at-home parent, this doesn’t mean you have to change your beliefs, but it does mean perhaps you should consider when your child goes off to preschool, for three hours a day, maybe you should consider getting a job for those three hours a day. Maybe when they go off to school for a full day, you should consider getting a full-day job. Or perhaps, you could even consider getting a full-time job. And perhaps for the couple of hours that your child would not be in school when you’re finishing up your work, they could hang out with a friend who has a parent at home, or you could rotate friends’ houses, or you could even maybe have them enroll in after-school activities, or extracurricular activities. There are so many options.
So many stay-at-home parents say that they are stay-at-home parent because they don’t want someone else to raise their child. That someone else, that elusive, evil, mysterious someone else. Sometimes, it’s not bad to have someone else also influence your child. Should that someone else spend more time with your child than you do? No! By all means, please, don’t hire a live-in nanny. Those are the children who someone else is raising. But the children whose parents are very engaged in their lives want to know things about them, want to be involved, want to volunteer to spend time in their child’s classroom, or be a part of the work their children are doing. Those parents are not allowing their children to be raised by someone else. Even if for two or three hours every day their child is with another adult, be it at daycare, or in an after-school activity, or with friends. Make sure if your child is going to be in care of someone else that it is someone you trust. Someone who you check up on, and you teach your child how to interpret the behavior of adults so that they understand when things aren’t right and they know how to communicate that to you. Remind them frequently about it. That’s what engaged parents do. Engaged parents will ask if anything weird happened, if anybody touched the child in an inappropriate manner, if anybody made fun of the child, if anybody pulled the child’s hair, and so on. They ask questions, because sometimes kids don’t have the words to explain something to their parents, or they don’t know how or where to start, especially if the incident hasn’t happened before.
Would your child perhaps be more at risk by having this additional exposure to people? Of course. But do bad things happen to children that have stay-at-home parents as well? Yes. We cannot shelter our children forever. It may be time to acknowledge that having adult interaction and fulfillment professionally, outside of the home, may mean that we are more engaged in our children’s lives.
According to a statement issued in July 2007 by the US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Health: “’The increase in the percentage of children living with a working parent is welcome news,’ said Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. ‘Secure parental employment helps to reduce the psychological toll on families, brought on by parental unemployment and underemployment.
That same statement asserted: “Secure parental employment may also enhance children’s psychological well-being and improve family functioning by reducing stress and other negative effects that unemployment and underemployment can have on parents.”
According to Mothers and More, a program which supports and brings together working mothers, less than 25% of married mothers with children worked full-time outside of the home in 1960, compared with 41% in 1997. This number keeps growing. If it doesn’t work, why do parents keeping at it? If parents felt disengaged from their children because of employment outside of the home, fewer parents would be seeking such employment. We’re seeing the opposite trend.
All I ask from you is to read this statement again: “It is possible that parents who work outside of the home are more engaged in their children’s lives than their stay-at-home counterparts.” I ask that you consider this statement. I ask you to really analyze this statement. Even if you disagree with it, please weigh this statement out.
Now that you’ve really thought about it, maybe your mind has changed a bit. Or maybe not. There are parents who already believed this and they are going to keep their minds set this way, there are parents who believed this and have now changed their minds, and there are parents who believe it is better for children to have a stay-at-home parent, no exceptions, and will continue to believe that. Finally, there are also parents who believed that having a stay-at-home parent is of the utmost importance, but who now see that may not in fact be the case.
Which are you?
