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Abstract
Parents in low-wage jobs lack both the time and resources needed to fill their dual roles of worker and parent. In this essay, the authors outline a “family security” approach that would help parents fulfill their roles effectively. They suggest policies for enabling parents to improve prospects for their children and combine work with child rearing. Among the recommendations are flexible and paid leave policies for working parents, guaranteed child care, and expansion of the Early Head program.
Introduction
Since the passage of welfare reform more than a decade ago, the new safety net’s mainstay has been enabling parents to work. Today, 7 in 10 low-income families have at least one working parent (Golden et al. 2007). Yet, unless policymakers also help enable parents to care for their children and address their needs, work may seem like or be a losing proposition. While the competing priorities of family and work are front and center in the lives of parents, in the policy world issues of parental work and children’s developmental needs are frequently in separate spheres. Too often, public discourse on how to encourage work among low-income families never touches on what growing children need to develop and succeed.
Below, we focus on the needs of children in low-income working families and put forth a new policy framework that integrates and supports work and children’s development. Drawing on a vast literature on children’s well-being and development, we assert that children have four key needs—stability, health, nurturing, and activity—that must inform any policy approach intended to support and encourage parental work. We also remind policymakers of research showing that disadvantaged children can benefit substantially from programs that address their development needs (Schweinhart et al. 2005; HHS 2002).
Low-income working parents struggle with the same challenges other working parents do but have far fewer resources, more vulnerabilities, and less flexible jobs. For example, for low-income working families, shift work and changing schedules make it harder to stabilize meal and bedtime routines. Lack of paid leave challenges parents to make and keep their children’s regular doctor or dental visits. Parental work in the first months of a child’s life may make it hard for a newborn to form critical attachments to a parent. Similarly, lack of workplace flexibility can keep parents from attending school events regularly and having more than perfunctory conversations with their children. And cash-strapped parents are hard pressed to pay for quality child care or camps, lessons, and social activities.
One in four children in low-income families have parents who work full time. Specifically, in 2007, 7.7 million low-income children lived in families where either a single parent worked full time or both parents in two-parent married families did. Some 1.1 million of these children were under age 3. Their parents work long and hard but still have little income or time to devote to their children. Many in lower-paying jobs do not have the flexibility parents need to care for their children when they are first born or sick, much less meet the extraordinary demands of kids with disabilities or special needs.
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The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
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