Long working hours with parents harm children's health

Family-friendly working hours support the development of the children

Young families often have several burdens to deal with. Often a parent in working life is shorter in order to be able to devote more to the child. Less revenue is then in contrast to the increased expenses that a child brings with it. In many cases, the other parent tries to compensate for this by overtime work. However, researchers have recently found in a study that working at night and at night can have a negative impact on children's mental health.

A research team of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB) investigated possible negative effects on the behavior and emotional stability of children due to later working hours of the parents. For this they evaluated data from 838 children aged seven to ten years. Accordingly, especially evening and night shifts had a strong negative impact. According to the study, parents with these working hours tended towards more rigor and negative communication behavior. The study results were recently published in the journal "Community, Work & Family".

According to a recent study, there is a correlation between late working hours of the parents and behavioral incidents of their children. (Image: Nomad_Soul / fotolia.com)

Scolding and screaming

The team used data from the "Families in Germany" study collected by the German Institute for Economic Research in the years 2010 to 2013. According to the researchers, late-working parents tended to scold, criticize, and yell at their child, which greatly affected the child's well-being. In many areas of children's mental health negative consequences could be identified.

Are parents overwhelmed with family-friendly working hours??

From the data collected, it was found that 23 percent of the fathers surveyed worked regularly at night and 40 percent in the evening. In the case of mothers, eleven percent of the cases occurred at night and 28 percent in the evening. The effects were measured in four areas: hyperactivity, emotional issues, conspicuous behavior, and peer problems. In all these areas, late working hours had negative consequences.

The behavior of the children changed the most

The biggest change was the researchers in the field of child behavior. Apparently the affected children showed more behavioral problems. "This is significant insofar as behavioral problems at a young age bring with them a higher risk of late-term offenses, drug-related risks or difficult educational and professional trajectories," explains the author team in a press release from the WZB on the study results.

The parenting style of both parents changes

Another interesting detail of the study was the finding that one parent's evening and night working hours often changed the parenting style of parenting. Men were even more affected by this influence. If her wives had late working hours, this often led to a change in parenting style. The researchers speak of a so-called "spill-over" (transmission effect).

Unhealthy night work

It was not only the WZB research team that dealt with the harmful effects of evening and night work. Other studies in recent years have shown other negative aspects of family-unfriendly working hours and headlines such as "Shiftwork leads to deadly heart disease", "Long hours are a health risk for women" or "Shift work affects thinking". (Vb)