Family and Consumer Sciences

Balancing work and family in today’s world Children today are much more likely to grow up in a household in which their parents work. Working parents are the new norm. Sixty percent of children now live in households where all the parents at home work at least part-time. This is up from 40 percent in 1965. Nearly half of all two-parent families now have two parents that work full-time. This is a sharp increase from previous decades. One thing that has not changed is the difficult balancing act working parents face. According to a new Pew Center survey, working parents say they feel stressed, tired, and rushed. They also feel like they don’t have enough quality time with their children, friends, partners or hobbies. The numbers show that while family structure seems to have changed, public policy and workplace structure have not adjusted to a new norm in which both parents work. Over half of all working parents say the balancing act is difficult. The expectations of modern parenthood aggravate the stresses they face. The shift has some other interesting effects as well. The median household income for a family in which both parents work full-time is $102,400, according to Pew. When mothers work part-time, it is $84,000, and when they stay home, it is $55,000. The ways parents spend their time at home have changed markedly over the years as well. Government time-use data show that parents overall do less housework and spend more time with their children than those in the past. The time men spend on paid work has decreased since 1965, while the time they spend on housework and childcare has increased. In most cases, women still do the majority of the childcare and housework, even when both parents work full-time. This is especially true when it comes to the mental tasks of raising a child, like managing their schedules and taking care of them when they are sick. Fathers and mothers are much more likely to equally share in doing household chores, disciplining children and playing with children. There is also a gender divide in parents’ perceptions of how much responsibility they take on, Pew found. Fifty-six percent of fathers say they share equally, while only 46 percent of mothers agree.