Aotearoa's Working Parents: Exploring the Association Between Employment and Parents' Highlights and Challenges with their Child

Abstract

There is a large body of Western literature exploring many aspects of parental employment and the effects these may have on both the rewarding and challenging moments parents experience with their young children. However, there remains a lack of research relevant to the Aotearoa New Zealand context, with implications specific to working parents within current New Zealand society. This thesis aims to fill this gap by exploring how the different employment situations of New Zealand parents affect their self-reported highlights and challenges with their child. Data from mothers (N = 6822) and their partners (N = 4404) within a current New Zealand longitudinal study found similarities in the highlights reported by working and non-working parents but variation in the reported challenges with respect to different aspects of employment (such as working hours and work schedule). Subsequent logistic regression analysis revealed that the most frequently reported challenges for both working and non-working parents (relating to work-life balance, parent-child bonding, sleep challenges, managing behaviour, child attributes, and parenthood in its entirety) were related to aspects of parental employment for both mothers and partners. These factors included work hours and schedules, childcare, child parity, parental age, socioeconomic deprivation, household income, and solo parenting. Of note, work-life balance challenges were found to have a large number of predictors, especially for mothers, reiterating the importance of supportive strategies for working mothers. The range of other predictive relationships presents implications for workplaces to provide flexibility and support for employees. These results align in general with existing literature and contribute to the small body of parental employment research specific to Aotearoa NZ, with findings that may inform Aotearoa’s working parents.