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Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 2052e2060

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Social Science & Medicine

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Job quality and inequality: Parents’ jobs and children’s emotional andbehavioural difficulties

Lyndall Strazdins*, Megan Shipley, Mark Clements, Léan V. Obrien, Dorothy H. BroomNational Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, College of Medicine, Biology and the Environment, The Australian National University, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 23 March 2010

Keywords:Child mental healthHealth inequalitiesWork conditionsSocial determinantsWork and familyAustralia

* Corresponding author. National Centre for EpidemBuilding 62, Mills Road, The Australian National UnAustralia. Tel.: þ61 2 6125 2837; fax: þ61 2 6125 074

E-mail address: lyndall.strazdins@anu.edu.au (L. S

0277-9536/$ e see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.02.041

a b s t r a c t

In the context of high and rising rates of parental employment in Australia, we investigated whether poorquality jobs (without security, control, flexibility or paid family leave) could pose a health risk toemployed parents’ children. We examined the extent to which both mothers’ and fathers’ jobs matter,and whether disadvantaged children are more vulnerable than others. Multiple regression modellingwas used to analyse cross-sectional data for 2004 from the Growing Up in Australia study, a nationallyrepresentative sample of 4e5 year old children and their families (N ¼ 2373 employed mothers; 3026employed fathers). Results revealed that when parents held poor quality jobs their children showed moreemotional and behavioural difficulties. The associations with child difficulties were independent ofincome, parent education, family structure and work hours, and were evident for both mothers’ andfathers’ jobs. Further, the associations tended to be stronger for children in low-income households andlone-mother families. Thus job quality may be another mechanism underlying the intergenerationaltransmission of health inequality. Our findings also support the argument that a truly family-friendly jobmust not erode children’s health.

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There are rising pressures on all parentsdmothers and fathers,couple and singledto work for pay. They are being propelled intothe labour market by complex forces linked to financial uncer-tainty, welfare requirements and policies to address populationageing (Edwards, 2001), so that the majority of parents nowcombine caring for children with holding a job. Yet, as parentemployment is rising, labour markets are changing. In the UK,USA, Canada and Australia, labour markets have split into well-paid, high-skilled jobs with good conditions and a pool of lowpaid, insecure, poor quality jobs (Goos & Manning, 2007).‘Hollowing’ labour markets leave fewer jobs in the middle, and asmore parents enter the workforce substantial numbers are unableto find a good quality job.

Thus, high and rising parental workforce participation is rede-fining the contexts in which contemporary children live. Althoughemployment increases family incomes, it consumes parental timeand effort (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004) and not all jobs are equal. Thebenefits of employment may therefore pivot on the quality andconditions of parents’ work. This study investigates whether thequality of parents’ work can shape health across generations,

iology and Population Health,iversity, Canberra, ACT 0200,0.trazdins).

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connecting two separate lines of enquiry. Extensive research anddebate concerns whether maternal employment itself is harmful tochildren, but less attention has been given to the conditions andquality of jobs available to mothers or fathers. A second line ofresearch has demonstrated that work conditions are key determi-nants of health, especially mental health, and generate healthinequalities among employed adults (Commission on the SocialDeterminants of Health, 2008; Marmot, Siegrist, Theorell, &Feeney, 1999; Stansfeld & Candy, 2006). Our paper addressesa conceptual and scientific gap by bringing together these researchfields, asking whether parents’ job quality impacts across genera-tions, affecting children’s health.

The nature of job quality

Our study considers parents’ jobs along an employmentcontinuum ranging from good to bad quality, characterised bycombinations of conditions (Grzywacz & Dooley, 2003). Job qualityis therefore a broad concept classifying jobs across a range ofconditions; following Green (2006, p. 9), we define job quality asthose ‘sets of work features which foster the wellbeing of theworker’. According to Green (2006) the dimensions distinguishinggood from bad quality jobs are skill, effort, control, wages and risk(including job security, and health and safety). Other definitions ofjob quality incorporate training, interesting (not monotonous)

L. Strazdins et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 2052e2060 2053

work and work-life balance as dimensions of high quality jobs(Brisbois, 2003; Chalmers, Campbell, & Charlesworth, 2005).

Each dimension of job quality can be considered a resource thathelps with job-related demands (the Job Demands-Resourcesmodel: Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). When these resources arelimited (that is, the job is poor quality), and demands (e.g., heavyworkloads, long hours) are high, strain develops and health erodes.For employed parents, four resources may be critical to intergen-erational health impacts. Job security and job control providefinancial stability and enable parents to control how and what theydo at work. Lack of control and insecurity show associations withadult mental health comparable to major stressors, placingemployees at increased risk of depression and anxiety (e.g., Ferrie,2001; Marmot et al., 1999). While these impacts on employees arewell-documented, few studies have considered possible healthcosts to employee’s children. Parent mental health plays a founda-tional role in children’s development, mental health and wellbeing(Downey & Coyne, 1990) and both mothers’ and fathers’ mentalhealth matters (Connell & Goodman, 2002; Kane & Garber, 2004).

Two other conditions can directly influence the care available tochildren. Flexible work hours and paid family leave are the aspects ofjobs conventionally labeled ‘family-friendly’. Both conditions helpparents fit their work with children’s schedules and needs,reducing time-related demands of the job (Estes, 2004; Strazdins,Broom, & Shipley, 2007). Overload and strain can be especiallyacute in families with young children (Higgins, Duxbury, & Lee,1994), eroding parents’ mental health (Allen, Herst, Bruck, &Sutton, 2000; Grzywacz & Bass, 2003). Thus, the present studyfocuses on employed parents with young children, and considersfour elements of job quality: job control, insecurity, flexible workhours and paid family-related leave.

Changing families

Families relying solely on father’s jobs are now a minority. TwothirdsofAustralian couple families aredual-earner, and sixoutof tenlone parents hold a job (ABS, 2008). The changes aremost striking infamilies with young children: in Australia, 48% of mothers withyoung children (under five years) are employed (OECD, 2007).

Work and family life are therefore increasingly interconnected.Both mothers and fathers must manage paid jobs with caring forchildren, multiplying the need for family-friendly work. However,few studies have considered children’s health and wellbeing as anoutcome of the jobs parents hold. In the present study we focus onthe health of young children, because they are closely dependenton family routines and relationships, and their wellbeing is closelyinterlinked with their parents’ (Goodman & Gotlib, 1999). Thus jobsthat support parents’ mental health and allow them to respond tofamily needs and schedules may be critical during this stage ofchildren’s development. Additionally, previous research hasfocused on mothers’ employment, but fathers are becoming moreinvolved in the care of their children. We therefore tested thelinkages between jobs, parents and children, leading to thefollowing hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1. Both mothers’ and fathers’ poor job quality isassociated with increased child emotional and behaviouraldifficulties.

Job quality and inequality

The influence of jobs on children’s wellbeing may partly dependon family structure and resources. A rising proportion of childrenlive in lone-parent (mostly lone-mother) households (ABS, 2003;

Teachman, Tedrow, & Crowder, 2000). Because these families areamong the poorest, policies have encouraged or required loneparents to work. In the US for example, welfare-to-work policieshave moved lone mothers off state support, but because many arelow skilled and have little bargaining power, they typically hold lowwage, poor quality jobs. Their children benefit from a modestimprovement in disposable income, but the mothers are time poorand often lack other resources (including the availability of anotherparent or caregiver) to buffer conflicting work and home demands(Corcoran, Danzinger, Kalil, & Seefeldt, 2000). We thereforehypothesised that the wellbeing of lone mothers and their childrenmay be particularly reliant on good work conditions.

Hypothesis 2. The association between mothers’ job quality andchildren’s difficulties is stronger in lone than couple-parentfamilies.

Across all family types and earning arrangements, income is animportant predictor of child health. Children in low-incomehouseholds have worse health than others (Bradley & Corwyn,2002; Schoon, Sacker, & Bartely, 2003), and poor quality jobscould exacerbate this health gap. Because low-skilled, low-incomeparents are more likely to have bad jobs, we expected more chil-dren in these households to be at risk (Bernstein, 2004). Howeverincome is also a critical coping resource, used to purchase goodsand services that can offset job-related impacts on children. Thus infamilies with low income and few resources, the health impacts ofpoor quality jobs may be amplified (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). Ourthird hypothesis was:

Hypothesis 3. Comparedwith economically-advantaged families,low-income parents are more likely to have poor quality jobs,and their children’s difficulties are more strongly associatedwith parent job quality.

Mechanisms linking parents’ job quality to child health

Most studies investigating the link between children and parents’jobs focused on mothers. They showed that most children benefitedfrom maternal employment via increased income, but few studiesconsideredwhether thequalityof the job is also important to children(Gottfried & Gottfreid, 2006; Han, Waldfogel, & Brooks-Gunn, 2001;Parcel & Menaghan, 1990). Another line of research has consideredthe spillover of work stress into the home, investigating whetherparentmood andmental health are transmissionmechanisms (Estes,2004;Menaghan,1991,1994;Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, &Crouter, 2000).Galinsky (1999) found parents’ workloads, job control and supportfrom colleagues and supervisors affected children’s perceptions ofparenting (see also Sallinen, Kinnunen & Rönkä, 2007). Other studiespointed to a connection between stressful jobs and parents’ distress,irritability, conflict andwithdrawal from their children (e.g., Almeida,Wethington, & Chandler, 1999; Repetti, 1994). This in turn affectedchildren’s and adolescent’s mood and sense of self, compromisingtheir wellbeing (Crouter, Bumpus, Maguire, & McHale, 1999;Galambos, Sears, Almeida, & Kolaric, 1995; Wierda-Boer & Rönkä,2004). Consequently, our fourth hypothesis tested whether parentmental health is the mechanism linking jobs to child wellbeing:

Hypothesis 4. The association between the quality of parents’jobs and children’s difficulties is mediated by parent mentalhealth (psychological distress). We expected that once theinfluence of job quality on parent mental health was accountedfor, there would be no direct association between parents’ jobsand children’s difficulties.

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Method

Data and sample

We tested hypotheses with data from the Growing Up in Australia,Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a nationallyrepresentative study of children, with themain unit of analysis beingthe study child. Our study used survey data collected in 2004, forchildren aged between 4 and 5 years and their parents. Mothers andfathers each completed a mail-back questionnaire on their ownhealth and wellbeing, and if employed, their work conditions.Primary caregivers (98% mothers) reported on children’s wellbeingand family background. Because the study design stratified post-codes by state and territory and urban/metropolitan status, weadjusted for cluster effects (Soloff, Lawrence, & Johnstone, 2005).

Although 4983 families were interviewed, not all returned ques-tionnaires (return rate: 84% mothers, 79% fathers). We restricted thesample to mothers and fathers who had worked for pay in theprevious week, and who had complete data on parent and childmental health (N ¼ 2373 mothers and N ¼ 3026 fathers for a total of3580 families). Because many of the families were dual-earner(n¼ 2107), about half of themothers and fatherswere from the samehousehold (51%: n ¼ 1819), although some dual-earner mothers(n ¼ 43) or fathers (n ¼ 202) did not complete a questionnaire.

Multiple imputationwas used to address the potential bias frommissing socio-demographic or work-related data (between .003%and 9.25%) using SPSS 17.0. Variablesmeasuring parent age, years ofeducation, work hours, employment conditions, income andsocioeconomic status were included in the imputation equations.Each imputation had five cycles, and preliminary analyses indicatedthey were stable. The ‘MI’ command in STATA 9.2 was used to

Table 1Demographic, employment and health characteristics of employed parents and their chi

Characteristics

Percent of sample (unless otherwise noted)Parent age (years) M (SE)Parent education (years) M (SE)Family typea Lone parentSole earner (couple-families)a Sole earnerInfant in family Infant

Equivalised household incomeb Nil to $31, 199$31, 200 to $51, 999$52, 000 to $77, 999$78, 000 to $114, 399$114, 400 or moreM (SE)

Child gender FemaleChildcare Regular

Work hours (weekly) c 35 h or fewerMore than 35 < 44More than 44 < 5455 h or moreM (SE)

Self employment Self employed

Job quality 0e1 Poor234 GoodM (SE)

Parent medical condition(s) Condition presentChild extra-care condition(s) Condition presentPsychological distress M (SE)Child difficulties M (SE)

Note. 51% of employed mothers and fathers were from the same households.a Because of small numbers, family type was not included in the analyses of fathers anb Equivalised household income (AUS $), a continuous variable, was used in analyses, bc We treated work hours as a continuous variable in analyses, but present the proport

calculate parameter estimates from the imputations. Analyses onthe imputed datasets also used sample weights to adjust for themarginal under-representation of lower educated mothers andlone-parent families (Soloff, Lawrence, Misson, & Johnstone, 2006).

Table 1 presents the demographic, family, employment, andhealth characteristics of employed mothers or fathers and theirchildren. Employed mothers and fathers differed in three key ways.First, three quarters of employed mothers worked part-time (under35 h), while nearly all employed fathers (93.2%) worked standardfull-time hours or longer. More than half of employed fathersworkedmore than 45 h per week, and one quarter worked very longhours (55 h or longer). Second, less than 1% of children were livingwith an employed lone father (n ¼ 11), compared with over 10%living with an employed lone mother (n ¼ 230). Further, of childrenwho lived in couple-parent households, less than 4% had a motherwho was the sole earner (n ¼ 77), compared to 40% with sole earnerfathers (n ¼ 1150). About 10% of children with employed motherswere from families with very low incomes (less than AUS $31,000),compared with less than 5% of fathers. Children of employedmothers were much more likely to be in regular, non-parentalchildcare compared with the children of employed fathers. Therewere few other differences in the study child’s characteristics.

Measures

Descriptive statistics for measures are provided in Table 1.Correlation tables are available as Supplementary appendix files

Child health: emotional and behavioural difficultiesThe Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, UK version;

Goodman, 1997) assessed symptoms of children’s emotional

ldren; weighted descriptive statistics.

Mothers (N ¼ 2373) Fathers (N ¼ 3026)

35.15 (.07) 37.43 (.14)14.78 (.07) 14.77 (.07)10.33 .0033.24 39.59

16.44 22.79

9.73 4.9519.79 23.3824.65 27.4931.21 29.7414.62 14.44

35,832.70 (547.74) 35,588.70 (521.75)49.78 49.5054.10 39.48

74.77 6.8217.18 38.435.46 30.162.60 24.60

23.59 (.36) 46.94 (.27)24.93 25.99

7.75 5.9923.10 17.8446.37 43.0922.77 33.092.84 (.02) 3.13 (.02)

24.67 21.826.48 7.323.79 (.07) 3.35 (.06)8.77 (.12) 8.94 (.11)

d sole earner was not included in the analyses of mothers.ut we present household income brackets to describe the sample.ion working part-, full- and long-full time hours for descriptive purposes.

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distress (e.g., ‘Often unhappy, downhearted or tearful’), conductand oppositional behaviours (e.g., ‘Often has temper tantrums orhot tempers’), hyperactivity and inattention (e.g., ‘Restless, over-active, cannot stay still for long’) and peer problems (e.g., ‘Pickedon or bullied by other children’). An overall child difficulties scorewas formed by summing the 20 items (response categories0 ¼ not true, 1 ¼ somewhat true and 2 ¼ certainly true), yieldinga possible range of 0e40, with higher scores indicating moredifficulties (Cronbach a ¼ 1). Scores between 14 and 16 indicatepossible difficulties, and scores 17 or over probable difficulties(Goodman, Renfrew, & Mullick, 2000). Approximately 15% ofstudy children had either possible or probable difficulties. Notethat the primary caregiver reported on the study child’semotional and behavioural symptoms, so this measure reflectsmothers’ report.

Parent job qualityThe job quality index for parents (JQIP, Strazdins et al., 2007)

classified jobs in terms of four conditions: job control (havingfreedom over how the job gets done), perceived security (feelingsecure about the job’s future), flexibility (able to change start andstop times) and access to paid family-related leave (paid paternity ormaternity leave and paid personal or family leave). We assessed jobquality by counting the presence of good conditions, so jobs couldrange from poor (none or just one of the above conditions), throughto good quality (all four conditions: details of coding and correlatesare in Strazdins et al., 2007).

Control variablesAll analyses adjusted for the following: parents’ years of education

and age; presence of an infant in the family (0 ¼ no infant, 1 ¼ infant)and self-employment (0¼ employee, 1¼ self-employed). Parents’workhours were measured in terms of average weekly work hours(including paid and unpaid overtime). Analyses also adjusted for thepresence of one or more parental medical condition(s) likely to lastmore than six months (0 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes). We controlled for the studychild having one or more extra-care condition(s), defined as needingextra medical, mental health or educational services for at least 12months (0 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes). Analyses of children’s difficulties furtheradjusted for child gender (boys ¼ 0, girls ¼ 1) and whether child wasin regular non-parental childcare (0 ¼ no, 1 ¼ yes). A dichotomousmeasure of family type (0¼ couple parent, 1 ¼ lone mother) classifiedfamily structure and was included in the analysis of employedmothers. For employed fathers, a dichotomous measure of soleearners (0 ¼ dual earner, 1 ¼ sole earner) was included in analyses.We adjusted for household socioeconomic status using equivalisedhousehold income (AUS $). This was calculated by dividing grossannual household income by the square root of the number ofpeople in the home and represents income proportionate to familyneeds (Atkinson, Rainwater, & Smeeding, 1995). We also usedequivalised income to stratify families, with the lower tertile rep-resenting relative socioeconomic disadvantage (families with anannual household income under $29,068.88).

Mediator: parent psychological distressDistress was measured with the Kessler K6 screening scale

(Kessler et al., 2002). Parents reported on how often they expe-rienced symptoms of depression or anxiety over the past 4 weeks(6 items, e.g., ‘Did you feel hopeless?’). Response categoriesranged from 0 (none of the time) to 4 (all of the time) and summedscores ranged from 0 to 24 (mothers a ¼ .81, fathers a ¼ .82).Scores of 13 or higher indicates extreme distress, and serious anddisabling mental illness. A cut-off score of 8 was used to estimateprevalence of moderate distress associated with common disor-ders such as depression and anxiety (9.7% of mothers and 7.7% of

fathers scored above 8). The summed (continuous) score wasused in all of our models.

Statistical analysesWe used multiple linear regression to test hypotheses. Anal-

yses were conducted with SPSS Version 17.0, Complex Samplestm

software (2007) and STATA Version 9.2 software (2007). Unlessotherwise noted, analyses used imputed data, sample weightsand adjustment for clustering in the design (which wouldotherwise underestimate standard errors). Mental healthvariables were non-normally distributed (skewness of childdifficulties .74; mothers’ distress 1.34; fathers’ distress 1.63).A sensitivity analysis using the log transformation showed nochange in significance or substantive findings, so untransformedvariables are presented for ease of interpretation. We alsovalidated our treatment of job quality (an ordinal variable) byconducting preliminary analyses including a quadratic term. Forboth mothers and fathers there was no evidence of non-linearassociations between job quality and child wellbeing. Interactionterms were computed using centred data. Because some mothersand fathers came from the same household, additional analysessimultaneously examined mother and father models to accountfor possible statistical dependency between predictors and childwellbeing (available from authors). We used seemingly unrelatedregressions (Stata 9), using non-imputed data, and these addi-tional analyses confirmed the associations and significance foundusing separate models.

We adjusted for a range of background variables to improve therobustness and interpretation of findings. We controlled for parentage and education since younger parents and those with lessschooling may be more likely to have poor quality jobs. Part-timehours are associated with poorer job quality (Chalmers et al., 2005),and some parents use self-employment as a strategy to helpmanage caring for children (Parasuraman & Simmers, 2001). Todisentangle their relative role, self-employment and work hourswere included as controls in the models. Finally, parents with poorphysical health or whose children have chronic health problemsmay ‘drift down’ into bad jobs, producing a reverse causal pathway(health selection). Pathways between poor job conditions andimpaired health are dynamic and can be reciprocal (Stansfeld,Clark, Caldwell, Rodgers, & Power, 2008); therefore all modelscontained controls for pre-existing chronic health problems inparents and children.

Our analyses followed this sequence: First, given the evidencegap on the influence of fathers’ jobs and children’s wellbeing,separate models for mothers and fathers tested hypothesisedassociations between job quality and children’s difficulties. Thenthe sample of employed mothers was stratified by lone or couple-parent status and by household income (lowest tertile versusmiddle and upper tertiles) to explore whether job quality showedstronger associations in relatively disadvantaged families. Thesample of employed fathers and their children was similarlystratified by income (note: very small numbers of lone fathersprohibited analysis of lone versus couple fathers). Supplementaryanalyses further stratified employed fathers by sole breadwinner ordual-earner status. We used interaction terms to test for statisticalsignificance between disadvantaged and advantaged families, andbetween sole- and couple-parent families.

Finally, to test whether parent mental health is the mechanismof transmission, parent distress was entered into the equationspredicting children’s difficulties. Reduction in the size of the asso-ciation indicated that parents’ distress mediated the link betweentheir jobs and children’s health (Baron & Kenny, 1986. Sobel tests(Sobel, 1982) assessed the significance of change in the associationbetween job quality and child difficulties.

Table 2weighted multiple regression analysis for mothers’ and fathers’ job quality predicting children’s difficulties.

Mother’s (N ¼ 2373) Father’s (N ¼ 3026)

B SE B b B SE B b

Child gender �1.17 .20 -.12*** �1.09 .19 -.11***Child extra-care condition(s) 3.01 .55 .15*** 3.35 .45 .17***Regular childcare .23 .20 .02 .34 .19 .03Infant in the family .59 .30 .05 .45 .22 .04*Family type .72 .41 .04 e e e

Sole earner e e e .54 .22 .05*Equivalised household income �.00003 .000007 -.10*** �.0000038 .0000069 �.12***Parent age (years) �.10 .02 �.10*** �.04 .02 �.05*Parent medical condition .58 .25 .05* .30 .23 .02Parent education (years) �.18 .04 �.09*** �.20 .04 �.10***Self employed �.57 .27 �.05* �1.00 .22 �.09***Work hours .01 .01 .04 �.0015 .01 �.0041Job quality �.44 .12 �.08*** �.43 .13 �.07**

Total R2 .10 .10

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

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Results

Social patterning of job quality

Table 1 presents the proportions of employed parents by jobquality category and shows clear gender differences. A third offathers had good quality jobs, compared with less than a quarter ofmothers. A sizable minority of parents (30.9% of mothers and 23.9%of fathers) worked in jobs in the two lower levels of job quality.

T-tests revealed job quality also varied across family type andhousehold income. Lonemothers held inferior quality jobs (M¼ 2.69,SD ¼ .06) compared to mothers in couple-parent families (M ¼ 2.86,SD ¼ .02; t (167.5) ¼ 2.72, p ¼ .01). Mothers’ in low-income house-holds had inferior jobs (M ¼ 2.66, SD ¼ .04) to those in wealthierhouseholds (M¼ 2.93, SD¼ .02; t (127.7)¼ 6.42, p< .001). Likewise,fathers’ job qualitywasworse in low (M¼ 2.83, SD¼ .02) thanhigherincome households (M ¼ 3.13, SD ¼ .02; t (102.2) ¼ 7.19, p < .001).

Children’s difficulties and parents’ jobs

Univariate analyses provided initial support for an intergenera-tional link between poor quality jobs and child difficulties(hypothesis 1). Both mothers’ and fathers’ job quality showedmodest associationswith children’s difficulties (note that because ofclustering we report beta coefficients, not zero-order correlations:mothers b¼�.55, SE b¼ .13, b¼�.10, p< .001; fathers b¼�.46, SEb ¼ .12, b ¼ �.08, p < .001). Table 21 shows the fully adjusted asso-ciation between children’s emotional and behavioural difficultiesand mothers’ job quality. Poor quality jobs were associated withmore child difficulties, with an effect size comparable to well-established predictors of children’s difficulties such as householdincome,maternal education and age in themodel. Further, mothers’job quality was more important for children’s wellbeing thanmothers’ work hours, which were unrelated to child outcomes.

Table 2 also shows a significant association between fathers’ jobquality and child difficulties, net of other influences on children’swellbeing. Although the effect size was smaller for fathers’ jobsthan mothers’, this difference was not statistically significant(z-score <.1). Fathers’ self-employment was also associated withfewer child difficulties, whereas children showed more difficultieswhen fathers were younger and had fewer years of education.

1 Mothers’ and fathers’ incremental R2 were significant (mothers R2: .01,F change: 12.89, p < .001, fathers R2: .003, F change: 5.92 p < .05.).

Because children’s difficulties are based on mothers’ report, theassociationwith fathers’ jobs is unlikely to be due to reporting bias.Additional analyses checked whether casual and temporaryemployment affected the associations. Including a dichotomousvariable distinguishing between jobs with secure or contingentcontracts did not change associations between job quality and childdifficulties for mothers (bchildren’s difficulties ¼ .001, SE ¼ .30, p ¼ .96)or fathers (bchildren’s difficulties ¼ .004, SE ¼ .39, p ¼ .84).

Children of employed lone mothers

We found mixed support for hypothesis 2. After stratifyingemployed mothers, multivariate analyses showed a strongeradjusted association between job quality and children’s difficultiesfor lone mothers, compared with mothers in couple households(see Table 3). This difference was not statistically significant(interaction of job quality by family type b ¼ �.43, SE ¼ .42,b ¼ �.02, p ¼ .31), however the small sample size of lone mothers(n ¼ 230) constrained statistical power to test hypothesis 2.

Children in low-income households

Hypothesis 3 was supported for mothers. We re-ran the modelafter stratifying the sample of employedmothers and their childreninto lowversusmid-to-high income households. As show inTable 4,the effect size of mothers’ job quality wasmore than twice as strongfor children in lowcomparedwithmid-to-high income families. Thisinteraction termwas statistically significant when tested in the fullsample (b ¼ 1.7e-05, SE ¼ .000008, b ¼ .05, p ¼ .03).

However we did not find this pattern for fathers. Stratifiedanalyses (Table 5) indicate fathers’ job quality has a similar asso-ciationwith children’s difficulties irrespective of household income(confirmed by the absence of a statistically significant interaction,b ¼ �2.0e-06, SE ¼ .000007, b ¼ �.01, p ¼ .79). Additional analysestested whether the association between father’s job quality andchildren’s difficulties depended on mothers’ employment status,and this was also non-significant (sole-earner fathers: b ¼ �.43,SE ¼ .21, b ¼ �.07, p ¼ .05; dual-earner fathers: b ¼ �.38, SE ¼ .17,b ¼ �.07, p ¼ .03).

How do parents’ jobs affect children?

Hypothesis 4 proposed that parents’ mental health (psycho-logical distress) explains the link between their job quality andchildren’s difficulties. To test each pathway, mediation analyses

Table 4Weighted multiple regression analysis for mothers’ job quality predicting children’sdifficulties, stratified by income.

Low-income(n ¼ 729)

Mid-to-high income(n ¼ 1644)

B SE B b B SE B b

Child gender �1.52 .39 �.16*** �1.05 .24 �.11***Child extra-care

condition(s)3.49 1.00 .17** 2.68 .65 .13***

Regular childcare .22 .41 .02 .23 .24 .02

Table 3Weighted multiple regression analysis for mothers’ job quality predicting children’s difficulties, stratified by family type.

Lone Mothers (n ¼ 230) Couple Mothers (n ¼ 2143)

B SE B b B SE B b

Child gender �.83 .68 �.09 �1.22 .20 �.13***Child extra-care condition(s) 5.08 2.3 .25* 2.77 .57 .14***Regular childcare .46 .77 .05 .20 .21 .02Infant in the family 3.61 1.51 .28* .50 .30 .04Equivalised household income �.00005 .000036 �.16 �.00003 .0000076 �.10***Mother age (years) �.18 .05 �.18** �.08 .02 �.08***Mother medical condition 1.05 .87 .09 .53 .27 .05*Mother education (years) �.16 .16 �.09 �.18 .05 �.09***Self employed .11 1.09 .01 �.62 .27 �.06*Work hours .04 .03 .11 .01 .01 .04Job quality �.72 .39 �.13y �.41 .13 �.07**

R2 .23 .09F for R change (unweighted) 4.65*** 15.86***

yp ¼ .07, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

L. Strazdins et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 2052e2060 2057

were conducted. Table 6 shows the adjusted association betweenmothers’ and fathers’ job quality and psychological distress.2 Jobquality was a key predictor of distress for both mothers and fathers,along with whether they had a medical condition, and for mothers,household income. There were no significant associations betweenmothers or fathers’ work hours and distress, nor did we find aninteraction between work hours and job quality. Z-scores calcu-lated with beta weights and standard error of the b coefficient(bmothers � bfathers/(O(semothers

2 þ sefathers2 ) revealed the relationshipbetween job quality and parent distress did not differ by gender (z-score ¼ .52).

We then tested the path between mothers’ and fathers’ distressand children’s difficulties (full analyses available on request).Children’s levels of emotional and behavioural difficulties wereassociated with mothers’ (adjusted b ¼ .37, SE b ¼ .03, b ¼ .25,p< .001) and fathers’ (adjusted b¼ .14, SE b¼ .03, b¼ .09, p< .001)distress, with the association significantly stronger for mothers (z-score < 3.77, p < .001).

Job quality was related to parents’ distress, which in turn pre-dicted children’s difficulties, supporting two steps in the proposedchain of influence. If distress is an explanatory variable, the asso-ciation between job quality and child difficulties should becomenon-significant once parents’ distress is added to models(hypothesis 4). Although this hypothesis was not fully supported(full analyses available on request) we found evidence fora substantial mediation effect. When mother’s distress was addedto the model, the beta weight for the associations between jobquality and children’s difficulties was significantly reduced by 37.5%(Sobel statistic ¼ �3.88, p < .001) and a small but significantcoefficient for job quality remained (b ¼ �.31, SE b ¼ .12, b ¼ �.05,p < .05). For fathers, adding distress to the prediction of childdifficulties also significantly reduced the beta weight for job qualityby 14.3% (Sobel statistic ¼ �3.57, p < .001), but like mothers, theassociation between child difficulties and job quality remainedsignificant (b ¼ �.35, SE b ¼ .13, b ¼ �.06, p < .001).

Infant in the family 1.43 .61 .11* .25 .32 .02Family type .83 .52 .05 .67 .91 .04Mother age (years) �.17 .04 �.17** �.06 .03 �.05*Mother medical condition .35 .44 .03 .71 .31 .06*Mother education (years) �.27 .10 �.14** �.19 .05 �.10***Self employed �.44 .48 �.04 �.57 .31 �.05Work hours .01 .02 .03 .01 .01 .03Job quality �.75 .24 �.13** �.35 �.35 �.06*

Discussion

We investigated whether poor quality jobs pose mental healthrisks for employed parents and their children. Our study is amongthe first to test for intergenerational health linkages, finding thatwhen parents’ jobs lacked security, control, flexibility or paid family

2 Mothers’ and fathers’ incremental R2 were significant (mothers R2: .01,F change: 22.80, p < .001, fathers R2: .03, F change: 10.79 p < .001.).

leave, children aged 4e5 years had more emotional and behav-ioural difficulties. Further, this association with child wellbeingoccurred when mothers or fathers worked in bad jobs, andalthough modest, shows an effect size comparable to parentincome, education and age.

Our second hypothesis, that poor quality jobs might compoundhealth disadvantage in low-income families, was supported formothers but not fathers. Poor quality jobs are low resource jobs(Bakker & Demerouti, 2007), andwhen families lack incomee a keyfamily resourcee the impacts on children appear to compound. Wealso found equivocal support for a hypothesised vulnerability ofchildren in employed lone-mother families. Small sample sizelimited our ability to test this expected vulnerability, but the find-ings are suggestive and show that irrespective of family structure,mothers’ job quality matters.

Findings also support the hypothesised explanatory role ofparents’ mental health: parents in poor quality jobs showedelevated distress which explained some of the association betweentheir jobs and children’s difficulties. Depressed parents are likely tobe more withdrawn and less warm or accepting (Goodman &Gotlib, 1999), however other important aspects of family lifecould also be affected by parents’ work conditions, especiallyparenting (e.g., Almeida et al., 1999; Galambos et al., 1995; Galinsky,1999; Repetti, 1994; Sallinen, Rönkä, Kinnunen, & Kokko, 2007).

R2 .14 .07F for R change

(unweighted)18.17*** 9.75***

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Table 5Weighted multiple regression analysis for fathers’ job quality predicting children’sdifficulties, stratified by income.

Low-Income(n ¼ 957)

Mid-to-high income(n ¼ 2069)

B SE B b B SE B b

Child gender �1.20 .34 �.12*** �1.08 .24 �.11***Child extra-care condition(s) 3.23 .67 .18*** 3.46 .60 .18***Regular childcare .10 .40 .01 .39 .22 .04Infant in the family .94 .40 .07* .22 .28 .02Father sole earner 1.00 .41 .10* .36 .26 .04Father age (years) �.08 .03 �.09** �.02 .02 �.03Father medical condition(s) .10 .38 .01 .47 .29 .04Father education (years) �.24 .08 �.12** �.24 .05 �.12***Self employed �1.17 .44 �.10** �.75 .28 �.07**Work hours .01 .01 .03 �.01 .01 �.04Job quality �.44 .22 �.08* �.43 .16 �.07**

R2 .11 .07F for R change (unweighted) 7.90*** 12.00***

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

L. Strazdins et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 2052e20602058

Our findings are consistent with previous research showingadverse work conditions (lack of job resources) predict adultmental health (e.g., Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Karasek, 1979;Stansfeld & Candy, 2006). Findings are also consistent withresearch reporting that work stress affects parents’ mood andbehaviour at home, which then affects children’s wellbeing(Galinsky, 1999; Perry-Jenkins et al., 2000).

Study contribution

We are not aware of other studies using such a large andrepresentative sample, adjusting for key covariates such as income,and with data on mothers’ and fathers’work conditions and parentand child wellbeing. The data enabled us to test the intergenera-tional health transmission mechanism, along with differences inthe associations by parent gender, family type and income. Ourstudy therefore extends work and health scholarship in three ways.First, it adds parents’ job quality as a source of influence on youngchildren’s wellbeing, identifying a previously unacknowledged riskto child health. Second, we add the new possibility that parentwork conditions could amplify inequalities across generations. Badjobs are concentrated among disadvantaged (low-income or lone)parents, and children in these families appear to be more affectedby parents’ poor quality jobs. Third, we show fathers’ jobs are alsoessential to understanding children’s health and wellbeing. Few

Table 6Weighted multiple regression analysis for s job quality predicting mothers’ and fathers’

Mothers (N ¼ 2373)

B SE B

Child extra-care condition(s) .60 .35Regular childcare �.09 .15Infant in family �.11 .20Equivalised household income .000016 .000052Family type .61 .28Sole earner e e

Parent age (years) �.03 .01Parent medical condition(s) 1.09 .19Parent education (years) .05 .03Self employed �.11 .17Work hours .01 .01

Job quality �.37 .09Total R2 .05

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

studies gather comparable data on fathers andmothers, hamperingtheory and scholarship on contemporary families; our findings helpaddress this evidence gap (Parke, 2004).

Limitations

The results and their interpretation require qualification. First,the study design was cross-sectional and cannot establish causalordering. It is possible that people get bad jobs as a consequence ofhaving poor mental health (health selection), and this explains thelink to children. Adjusting for chronic health problems in parentsand their children can only partly address health selection in cross-sectional designs; a more definitive test of causal ordering requiresmultiple data waves. It is also true that children’s emotional andbehavioural difficulties can be distressing to parents, which mayaffect howparents report onwork. One strength of this study is thatour measure of job quality is not wholly reliant on perceptions, as itincludes objective conditions of paid leave and flexibility.

A second limitation is the reliance on mothers’ reports of chil-dren’s difficulties. Perhaps mothers who are distressed report morenegatively on jobs and their children. However the inclusion of datafrom fathers is reassuring; we found a significant associationbetween fathers’ job quality (reported by fathers) and child diffi-culties (reported by mothers). To confirm our findings, research onolder children could include children’s self report, or teachers’reports. In fact, other studies using adolescent reports aresupportive, demonstrating significant linkages between parentwork-related mood and adolescent mental health (Sallinen et al.,2007; Wierda-Boer & Rönkä, 2004).

Many dimensions of jobs contribute to quality, and we selectedonly four for this study. These findings show a connection betweenbad job conditions (net of pay) and parent and child wellbeing. Thechildrenwe studiedwere aged between 4 and 5 years, so the resultsreflect a stage in the lifecycle when parent and child mental healthis strongly interconnected (Connell & Goodman, 2002; Han et al.,2001; Higgins et al., 1994). This may be especially true formothers and children, and we found stronger associations betweenmothers’ job quality and child difficulties, relative to fathers’ (note,this may be due to mothers’ reporting bias). Other studies showthat fathers’ jobs become more influential when children are older(e.g., Sallinen et al., 2007). However, differences in the associationsbetweenmothers’ and father’s jobsmay not apply to countries withless gender-distinct family roles or employment patterns, or for allfamilies. For example, Han et al. (2001) found that early maternalemployment showed long-term impacts for US children in White(but not African-American) households.

psychological distress.

Fathers (N ¼ 3026)

b B SE B b

.04 .57 .28 .04*�.01 �.06 .16 �.01�.01 .21 .14 .03�.08** �.0000073 .0000045 �.03.05* e e e

e .23 .16 .03�.05* .00024 .01 .00414.14*** .77 .16 .10***.04 .07 .03 .05*

�.01 �.31 .16 �.04*.04 .0011 .01 .0045

�.10*** �.63 .10 �.17***.05

L. Strazdins et al. / Social Science & Medicine 70 (2010) 2052e2060 2059

Policy implications

Findings from this study challenge simple solutions to socialexclusion andwelfare reform. Often such interventions view parentemployment as a primary goal. Our study shows, however, thatparent employment may deliver mixed blessings to children if jobsare poor quality, particularly when families are already disadvan-taged. On the other hand, the converse is also true. Good quality jobscouldoptimize thehealthbenefits ofwork, so families donotneed totrade-off earning income with wellbeing. Ensuring all parents canaccess a good quality jobmay therefore provide awinewin solutionfor policies seeking to increase parent employment, and policiesseeking to redress health inequity and support children’s wellbeing.

In the context of globalizing economies and ensuing uncer-tainties, nations are also facingmajor demographic changes. Ageingpopulations create imperatives to maximise workforce participa-tion, adding to the need for family-friendly jobs. Our notion of jobquality goes beyond traditional definitions of family-friendliness.Quality is a broader and more fundamental construct; it includesjob security and control as well as paid family leave and flexiblework times. Our findings suggest that policies to promote family-friendliness must therefore consider a wider range of work condi-tions, and view children’s wellbeing as the benchmark for a reallyfamily-friendly job.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by an Australian Research CouncilDiscovery Grant DP0774439, and we thank our co-investigators JanNicholson, Michael Bittman, Sara Charlesworth and Bryan Rodgerswhose ideas are foundational to this paper. Thank you to EmmaGeorge and Sharryn Sims for their help with data, editing andmethods. We thank all involved in the Growing Up in Australia(LSAC) study. Growing Up in Australia was initiated and funded aspart of the Australian Government’s Stronger Families andCommunities Strategy by the Australian Government Departmentof Housing, Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs(FaHCSIA). The study is being undertaken in partnership with theAustralian Institute of Family Studies, with advice being providedby a consortium of leading researchers at research institutions anduniversities throughout Australia. The data collection is undertakenfor the Institute by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. All viewsexpressed in this paper are the authors’, and do not represent theviews of FaHCSIA or the Australian Institute of Family Studies.Megan Shipley is now an employee of the Australian GovernmentDepartment of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indig-enous Affairs. The opinions, comments and/or analysis expressed inthis document are those of the author and do not necessarilyrepresent the views of the Minister for Families, Housing,Community Services and Indigenous Affairs or the AustralianGovernment Department of Families, Housing, CommunityServices and Indigenous Affairs, and cannot be taken in any way asexpressions of Australian Government policy.

Appendix. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found inthe online version, at doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.02.041.

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