Jobs can either deplete parents energy for parenting or give them more energy for parenting. There is a cyclic relationship between the quality of a parent's experience in her work environment and her mood at home. Parents with good working environments come home in better moods and with more energy for parenting. These same parents in turn have more energy to invest in work. Children formulate opinions about their parents work experience regardless of parents discussions about their work.
Children learn about the many reasons why people work from observations of their parents.
Galinksy notes that children were more likely to say that their fathers rather than their mothers put their jobs first. Children also worry about the impact of work on their parents, says Galinsky. In general, children feel more positively about working parents when their parents are seen as liking their jobs and when they share stories about good things that happen at work. The responses of the 1,023 children were particularly revealing, perhaps because they could speak more frankly when discussing other working families than when discussing their own. Work if you want to work.