Key takeaways for healthcare providers
- Parents who work outside of the standard Monday-Friday, 9-5 hours must balance their work schedule with the demands of parenting.
- Fathers’ parenting is often influenced by non-standard work schedules, and some types of work, such as night shifts, can increase certain types of parenting while others can decrease the amount of parenting.
- Achieving the right balance between work and parenting should be considered within the context of the family. For example, the mother’s work schedule, the age of the child, and the type of parenting activity may all play a role in the effect of different work schedules.
How do fathers’ unusual work schedules affect their parenting?
Fathers are important. We know the positive impact of fathers as caregivers in terms of emotional support, interactive care and the day-to-day education of their children. But does it matter if they regularly work unusual hours, such as evenings, overnights or weekends, which could compromise their ability to carry out their parenting activities? Considering that more than half of working British fathers work like this different hours during the first decade of their children’s lives, it is imperative to understand how this affects fathers’ parenting and whether the effects vary by context. (Non-standard work schedules are also common among American fathers.)
New quantitative evidence from the United Kingdom offers a nuanced answer. My colleague, Anne McMunn, and I used data from the Millennium cohort study – a nationally representative sample of children born in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2002. We analyzed 11,412 fathers when their children were nine months old and 7,791 fathers when their children were almost seven years old. We focused on two measures of parenting: basic care (in both age groups) and play and recreation (for seven-year-olds).
Photo: Gustavus Fring. Pexels.
Fathers of nine-month-olds were asked how often they cared for their babies alone, changing diapers, feeding their children or getting up at night to care for them. Fathers of seven-year-olds were asked whether they helped their children to go to bed or cared for them alone. They were also asked how often they read with or to their children, told stories, did musical activities, drew, played physical games, took the children to the park, or played with toys or games indoors.
Different nonstandard schedules affected fathers’ involvement in different ways
We found that fathers who worked evenings between 6 and 10 pm, both when their children were young and when they were seven, spent less time on basic parenting activities than fathers who worked standard hours. For example, they spent less time caring for a child alone, getting a child ready for bed, changing diapers, or getting up at night to soothe a baby. In contrast, fathers who worked night schedules, such as from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., spent more spend time on these basic care activities.
Initially, we found that fathers who regularly worked evenings spent more time and those who worked weekends spent less time on play and recreation than fathers who worked standard hours. However, these differences may stem from job characteristics, such as long hours, rather than work schedules. Finally, we found no evidence that the relationship between fathers’ work schedules and parenthood differed by the intensity of fathers’ work hours, families’ poverty status, or fathers’ educational attainment.
While dads who work nights reduce the amount of parenting they do, dads who work nights have opportunities to be more actively involved in parenting
These findings support a more nuanced view of the integration of non-standard work schedules with parenting. Not all deviant work schedules have a negative impact on fathers’ involvement. While dads who work nights reduce the amount of parenting they do, dads who work nights have opportunities to be more actively involved in parenting.
Previous research into working at specific times of the day helps interpret these results. Nighttime schedules can create openings for dads to be involved in parenting routines during the day, early morning or evening, depending on when work starts and ends. In contrast, evening work can take place during the children’s bedtime, reducing opportunities for fathers who are currently working to be involved in parenting. In addition to the basic parenting activities we examined, other studies have also found that fathers who work evenings miss out on family activitiessuch as helping with homework and eating together.
Mothers’ work schedules also affect working fathers’ parenting time
The story is incomplete if we do not consider the role of mothers’ work. We investigated whether the available time of parents in the household was also important for the parenting time of fathers. We found that fathers’ night work facilitated more basic parenting activities when mothers worked than when mothers did not work. However, fathers participated even more in basic parenting activities when both parents had different schedules than when both worked fixed hours.
![Father works at different working hours](https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966.jpg 1280w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-300x200.jpg 300w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-768x513.jpg 768w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-356x238.jpg 356w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-700x468.jpg 700w, https://childandfamilyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7220966-50x33.jpg 50w)
Photo: Pavel Danieluk. Pexels.
This may indicate a preference for parental childcare. Some couples engage in tag-team parenting, which involves reducing the overlap between their work schedules and maximizing time with their children. For example, if one parent works nights or weekends, the other parent stays home and takes care of parenting rather than paying for childcare.
Alternatively, our findings may reflect not parents choosing to work non-standard schedules, but the financial constraints of finding childcare at non-standard times. Despite the greater provision of publicly funded childcare in the UK for three to five year olds, compared to the US context, childcare is expensive and harder to find outside of regular daytime hours.
Policies and programs can help mitigate the problems of parents’ irregular work schedules
How can fathers make it work so they can make a significant contribution to their children’s lives? The challenge for workplace policies and government programs is to mitigate the potential difficulties for fathers of working non-standard schedules. Employers should recognize a lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic: that many jobs can be performed flexibly.
Working odd hours can compromise supportive parenting, but it can also lead to more parenting time under the right circumstances.
Some parents view non-standard work schedules as an opportunity to achieve their goals of integrating family time, parenting, and paid work. Employers can advertise vacancies as flexible and in the UK shorten the waiting time before employees can request flexible work schedules. Such policies promote inclusiveness as the demand for atypical work is met and matched with employees who are available and willing to work such hours.
When parents have no control over work schedules
However, not all parents have control over their work schedules. For those parents, government policies can encourage childcare facilities to remain open in the evenings and weekends, and employers can offer wage premiums for working outside standard hours. Such programs can ease restrictions for families in need of affordable childcare.
Parents who have unusual work schedules may well want to minimize the potential negative impact of their working hours on their parenting. When parents think about integrating their work schedules with family time, they should consider the context of their family life, for example, the ages of their children, whether both parents work and what times of the day, and the types of parenting activities they undertake during the course of a day (for example, play or basic care).
In our study, we could not determine whether a parent chooses to work at a different time, but such choice in work schedules is undoubtedly a factor in how parents integrate work and family time. Amid the daily challenges of juggling work and parenting time, working odd hours can compromise supportive parenting — but it can also lead to more parenting time under the right circumstances.