Parents are the first teachers in a child’s life and play a pivotal role in shaping their adult lives. With the advent of the family-style where both the parents are at work, this parent-child relationship has also faced a positive and negative impact. There is more disposable income for the parents to spend on the child but less time to engage effectively with their children.
How Working Parents Affect a Child’s Development?
Earlier, with the joint family system, raising a child was no difficult feat at all as there were multiple caregivers for a child apart from the mother. Aunts, uncles, grandparents – everyone helped in the upbringing of the children in the family.
Nuclear families have, however, mushroomed and increased all over the country, leaving working parents with almost no family member to leave their child with. This style of parenting came with its own positives and a few downfalls as well. It leads to greater maturity levels and experience that the parents can share with their children while reducing a considerable time that they could have spent with them.
The below-mentioned points help you get a detailed view of the good effects and problems faced by children of working parents:
Positive Effects
Let us first focus on the many positives that the children of parents (both of whom are working) can experience.
Quality Lifestyle
With both the parents working, a high-quality lifestyle is more affordable for most households. There is more money that parents could spend on their children for their educational or extra-curricular needs.
Life Experiences
Since both the parents go out to work, they have a plethora of life lessons and experiences with them to share with their children. This helps the child to have a more mature outlook towards their lives.
Valuing Time
As both the parents have to go out to work, they most often have very few hours to spend at home with their kids. This teaches the children that time is indispensable and doesn’t come back once it slips away. They understand the value of time faster while making the most of it.
Make Children Independent
Children of working parents become independent from a very early age. Since they realise that their parents are at work, they learn to take their decisions themselves making them good and confident decision-makers.
Dealing with Stress
Children learn from their surroundings. When they notice how their parents balance their work life and home life, it makes them more respectful towards others and helps them to cope up with stress better later in their lives.
Negative Effects
Though both the parents working have a significant positive outcome in the lives of their children, they come with a few negatives as well. Let’s look at the negative impacts of a working couple on the child’s development:
Psychological Effects
With the nuclear family style, couples have to move out into the cities for their jobs. Their parents are unwilling to settle down in the city leaving their hometown and babysit the children. This leaves the parents with very little support from their own families. As a result, they have to hire nannies or admit their kids in daycare facilities. Parents need to be extra careful in selecting daycare and nannies for the kids otherwise the quality of attention towards the child is sure to decline with outside help.
Behavioural Changes and Mood Swings
Parents need to make sure they spend 30 minutes to 1 hour of quality time with their children every day. As the children are left with the nannies or at the daycare, they tend to suffer from restlessness and have a hard time managing their mood swings. When parents don’t spend more time with their children, it tends to make them more stubborn and aggressive.
Bonding With the Parents
Sometimes when both the parents are busy at their work and spend very less time at home with their kids, the bond that the children have with their parents suffer. As the kids grow up, this gap may widen.
Every parent, whether working or non-working, wants to raise a child who can contribute positively to society. Parents play a vital role in shaping the lives of their children. Even if both parents in a nuclear family are working, make sure that there is enough time dedicated daily to spending time with the kids.