Parental After-School Stress and Psychological Well-Being

The mismatch between employed parents' work schedules and their children's school schedules creates the structural underpinning for an as-yet-unstudied stressor, namely, parental after-school stress, or the degree of parents' concern about their children's welfare after school. We estimate the relationship between parental after-school stress and psychological well-being in a sample of 243 employed parents of children in grades K-12. Parental after-school stress is related to psychological well-being. This relationship did not differ by parent gender or child age but was significantly stronger for parents of girls versus boys. Our results suggest that parental after-school stress is an important stressor that affects the well-being of a large segment of the workforce and warrants further research. Key Words: child age, child gender, parental after-school stress, parent gender, psychological well-being. As of 2001, more than one third (37.2%) of the labor force consisted of parents of minor children (computed by the authors from data in U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002, 2003), and most of those children are school age; that is, in grades K-12. For most full-time employed parents, the gap between the end of the school day and the time they arrive home from work is approximately 20-25 hours per week (American Youth Policy Forum, 1999). Given the lack of high-quality, affordable, and accessible after-school programs, many parents must make ad hoc and often unreliable and complicated arrangements for children's after-school care (Heymann, 2000). This gap creates the structural underpinning for an as-yet-unstudied stressor, parental after-school stress, or the degree to which parents are concerned about the welfare of their children during the after-school hours. In this article, we estimate the relationship between parental after-school stress and psychological well-being in a sample of 243 employed parents who have at least one school-age child and who work at a large financial services institution. BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION There is a great deal of research relating the quality of employed parents' relationships with their children to the parents' psychological well-being (Barnett, Brennan, & Marshall, 1994; Barnett & Hyde, 2001; Barnett & Marshall, 1993; Barnett, Marshall, & Pleck, 1992). Generally, when parent-child relationships are positive, health and well-being are high for both fathers and mothers. Yet, none of these studies focuses on the special demands faced by employed parents of school-age children, even though far more working parents have school-age than preschool-age children, and after-school care options are less available for preschoolers than are day-care options (Heymann, 2000). Given the scarcity of after-school care options, many parents are forced to leave their school-age children in less-than-adequate care or even in self-care. Allen and Funkhouser (1998) found that 44% of 12-year-olds were in self-care after school, and many of these children were also caring for younger siblings. Such ad hoc arrangements tend to be dangerous and unreliable, creating distress for both parents and children (Heymann, 2000). Parents have good reason to worry about unsupervised children, who are at high risk for juvenile crime, loitering, truancy, substance use/abuse, sexual activity, and victimization (Cohen, Farley, Taylor, Martin, & Schuster, 2002; Kurz, 2002; National Center for Schools and Communities, 1999; Newman, Fox, Flynn, & Christeson, 2000). Unsupervised teens are more likely than younger children to engage in risky behaviors, but younger children may be at higher risk for being victimized. Parents of daughters may worry more about their vulnerability to crime or the possibility of pregnancy, whereas parents of sons may worry more about their involvement in delinquent behavior. Because children of all ages and both genders are at risk when after-school care is inadequate, however, we do not expect the relationship between parental after-school stress and well-being to differ by child's age or gender. …