Reference no: EM13791077

Child Care Problems and Employment

The issues that will be addressed are that all parents struggle with daycare and employment, however a single parent in particular single mothers can and do have more problems juggling daycare and their employment. This needs to be addressed because the single mother is more likely to make changes to their employment status because of the daycare problems.

If single mothers do not have close friends and relatives to help with daycare, the mothers end up missing work because of problems with daycare. The child or children could be sick and not be able to attend daycare, they may be having behavioral problems that lead to the mother having to leave or miss work and stay at home with the child. Daycare may cost more than the mother can afford to pay.
Forry and Hofferth (2011) discusses the "association between child care subsidies and parents' experience of child care related work disruptions while controlling for individual, family, child care and community characteristics" (Forry & Hofferth, 2011). During this study there were two questions asked, the first question posed was asking "is receipt of a child care subsidy a negative predictor of experiencing a child care-related work disruption?" thesecond question posed to the same parents over a period of time, "do parents experience fewer child care-related work disruptions while receiving a child care subsidy as compared with while not receiving a subsidy?"(Forry & Hofferth, 2011).

The first study used longitudinal survey and "verified administrative data collected in Montgomery County, Maryland, using quasi-experimental design" (Forry & Hofferth, 2011). The second study was a subsample of families that was taken from the Fragile and Child Wellbeing study that were either receiving child care subsidy or were financially eligible to receive child care subsidy. "The use of multivariate change analyses applied to quasi-experimental data also sets this study apart from current literature in the field. (Forry & Hofferth, 2011).
One thing that was surprising in this article was it was found that even when there was more than one adult in the home there was still disruption in child care and work related disruptions. This was found to be because even though there was more adults in the home, usually the multiple adults in the home was for financial reasons so the adults were working and not available to help with daycare.
Hofferth and Collins (2000), discusses the ways that childbearing and child rearing affect a mother's ability to maintain stable employment. The article shows that mother who have recently given birth, have a large number of children and young children are more likely to quit their job at any given time. The article shows that mothers who have lower paying jobs and have young children and do not have the convenient access to center based child care programs are more likely to leave their jobs.
The research method that was used for this study was a discrete time logit models, this was used to examine the relationship between employed mothers of preschool children who leave their jobs and the constraints of child care, the model estimates the log odds of leaving "work in any given month as a function of number and ages of children, the expected birth of a child, job-related characteristics, given that she was employed in the prior month" (Hofferth & Collins, 2000).
Gordon, Kaestner and Korenman (2008) discuss how the type of child care a mother uses is connected to employment absences but in different ways. An example is when a mother uses a larger day care center there is less likely to be employment absences because of provider unavailability, but rather more absences due to child illnesses. When using a smaller day care center there it is more likely the mother will miss work because of provider unavailability and this is the reason more mothers quit their jobs, however the mothers who quit work because of provider unavailability are in the lower wage bracket.
This study was conducted by building on the prior study discussed by the authors in 2005 regarding the offsetting consequences of the type of child care on employment absences and the parents leaving their employment. The questions asked in this study was "(a) Are parents who use larger and more formal caresettings more likely to stay home from work when their child is sick but less likely to miss work because ofprovider unavailability than parents who use smaller and less formal child-care settings? (b) Do work absencesbecause of child illness and provider unavailability have negative consequences for maternal employment?" (Gordon, Kaestner & Korenman, 2008).
The longitudinal method was used for this study, there were 1,364 children and families who were participants. The first part of the study was between birth and three years of age of the child, phone interviews were conducted every three months. Child care was divided into four groups to look at, dedicate child care facility, private home based child care with five or more children, home based child care with three or four children, and home based with only one or two children. Mothers were asked if their child had been sick in the last month and if they had to miss work because of the illness. The study was limited because of the modest response rate by the parents and that the sample was not nationwide, rather only nine state were used.

Meyers, Heintze and Wolf (2002) discuss the growing demand for substitute child care because of more mothers working and returning to work after giving birth to their child. The article reports that there is a gap between mothers and non-mothers in regards to employment because the mother has to pay child care rates. This article shows that low income mothers are able to utilize day care for children when the day care is subsidized by the federal Welfare programs. The article does suggest that although there are programs for subsidized child care there are few mothers utilizing the programs.
This study used data collected from low-income single mothers, who were either currently receiving welfare or had recently received welfare, the mothers were welfare recipients in California. There were two questions that were asked, "What are the chances that these mothers would receive child care subsidies if they were to use child care, and how would variations in the likelihood of being subsidized affect these mothers' labor market activities?" (Meyers, Heintze & Wolf, 2002).
The study used a two stage model to analyze the effect of child care subsidies on labor market activity. When looking at the stages it was found that there was a probability that each mother who was a participant would have been subsidized if she had used child care. The study found that 69% of mothers who could have used subsidized child care were not using it, and they were either using a family member or paying out of pocket for child care (Meyers, Heintze & Wolf, 2002).

 

Montes and Halterman, (2011)discuss how the impact of child care problems can and do affect a parents' employment. What was found from this study is that all families with children young and older face employment challenges, it was discussed that because many jobs and the school hours do not coincide there is a problem there, do the parents take the job that starts before school, or starts after school. It was found that a parent's education level does not make any difference in the issues of employment and child care, and the study showed that lower-income families only have a slightly higher chance of having to modify their work than higher-income families.
A national representative random digit dial survey Gallup panel was used to gather the answers for this study. The household criterial for the study was that families had a child or children ages 0 - 13 years of age. The phone survey lasted for approximately 15 - 20 minutes and the participants consented to respond to the questions. The study found that among some of the issues facing single parents was having a child with behavioral issues increased the odd of having child care related employment changes and well as having children was also a significant increase in the parents job performance.
The questions that will be asked are "in the last six months, did you have to make a change to your employment status because of problems with child care? Are you a single parent household or two parents household?"
The hypothesis is more single parent households will make a change to their employment status because of child care problems.

Methodology
Purpose statement.
More single parent households will make a change to their employment status because of child care problems.
Participant
The participants for the study were the households with single parents whose income ranged from $10,000 to $50,000 yearly and the number of children they have child care for and households with two parents in the same income range and the number of children they have child care for. The study will cover all areas of the United States and will have parents who are single and married.
Materials and Procedures.
The materials there were used was both closed and open questionnaires that were distributed to the participants in only five regions. The procedure was to visit this regions and give the questionnaires to the families and wait for an instant answers in an attempt to avoid time consumption.The questions asked were; the most influential experiences someone had in the work with young children and families, among this experience which ones were the most important to them and why, in the last six months, did they have to make a change to their employment status because of problems with child care, are they a single parent household or a two parents household. Some of these questions were open to the participant and others were closed.

 

Variables.
REGIONS Bad experiences from families. (both single and two parents result) Good experiences from the families. (both single and two parents result)

WALLET REGION 110 40

KAMAT REGION 95 55

SARIT REGION 85 65

WARENG REGION 114 36

HUNGS REGION 145 100

REGIONS Child care experience being not important (both single and two parents result) Child care experience being important. (both single and two parents result)

WALLET 4 20

KAMAT REGION 5 19

SARIT 6 18

WARENG 7 17

HUNGS 12 12

REGIONS Number of two parent households who made a change in employment status because of child care. Number of single parent households who made a change in employment status because of child care.

WALLET 30 120

KAMAT REGION 39 111

SARIT 36 114

WARENG 48 102

HUNGS 90 60

Data analysis plan.

Part 1.

Null hypothesis: families have bad experience with young children when employed.

Alternative hypothesis: families have good experience with young children when employed.

Paired t test

Interpretation

From the analysis above t-test results is given as 4.8166 and the critical value is given as 0.0085. Because the test statistics is more than the critical value there is enough evidence to accept the null hypothesis and conclude that the families had bad experience with children when they are at work.

Part 2.

Null hypothesis: bad experiences with parents because of child care while at work.

Alternative hypothesis: good experiences with parent because of child care while at work.

One-Sample Statistics

N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

Not important 5 6.80 3.114 1.393

Important. 5 17.20 3.114 1.393

One-Sample Test
Test Value = 0
t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower Upper
Child experience not being important. 4.882 4 .008 6.800 2.93 10.67

Child experience taken as important. 12.349 4 .000 17.200 13.33 21.07

From the analysis using SPSS program, the null hypothesis can be accepted since there is a significant difference between Child care experiences being important for both single and two parents household. This shows that both single and two parent household find it important to have their experience to their children. This is shown by the mean time given as 17.2 compared to that of 6.8.

Part 3.

Null hypothesis: more single household parent changed their employment status due to child care.

Alternative: more two household parents changed their employment status due to child care.

From the SPSS program, the average mean of number of single household parent who made change to their employment status is more than the average mean of two household parents who made change in their employment status. Since the standard deviation is the same, it can be concluded that there is no wide variation is this change for both single household and two household parents.

Statistics

welltreat unwelltreat

N Valid 5 5

Missing 0 0

Mean 48.60 101.40

Std. Deviation 24.037 24.037

Conclusion.

From the analysis above it can conclude that more single parent households will make a change to their employment status because of child care problems.