https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-6128
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ABSTRACT
This article investigates the associations between nonstandard work schedules, parents’ mental health, and couple relationship happiness across childhood using the Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal, population-based data set of births in the UK. Using individual fixed effects models, we investigated the relationship between maternal and paternal nonstandard work schedules, examining both separate and joint work schedules and mental health and relationship happiness. Although we did not observe any associations between mothers’ nonstandard work schedules and their mental health, we did find regularly working night schedules were associated with lower relationship happiness, and particularly so during the school-age period. Fathers’ evening and weekend work schedules were associated with worse mental health. The joint work schedule in which mothers worked a standard schedule and fathers worked nonstandard schedules was associated with lower relationship happiness for mothers and worse mental health for fathers. These results demonstrate the salience of incorporating fathers’ work schedules to understand the challenges and benefits to families of nonstandard work schedules. Our study also emphasizes the significance of investigating the family consequences of nonstandard work schedules in different country contexts.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for helpful comments on analyses from participants at the Quantitative Social Science Seminar and inspiration from Harriet Presser.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Afshin Zilanawala
Afshin Zilanawala is an Assistant Professor of Demography at University of Southampton. A particular focus of her research is investigating the proximate family setting in which children live and examining factors, such as parental employment, mental health, and economic hardship, which are implicated in the (re)production of inequalities in children’s development. Much of her research considers the consequences of systems of stratification (e.g. race/ethnicity and gender) on children’s wellbeing across early childhood and adolescence. Additionally, her research agenda incorporates the implications of policy contexts on families’ social and economic resources by examining inequalities in children’s development cross-nationally between the US and UK.
Anne McMunn
Anne McMunn’s research is concentrated on the social determinants of health within a life course epidemiological framework, increasingly with a focus on the biosocial interface. More specifically, she investigates the potential influence on health and wellbeing of aspects of work (defined broadly from a gender perspective) and social relationships (including within the family), how gender structures work and family relations and the impact of social change in this area on children and families. Professor McMunn’s work mainly uses longitudinal quantitative techniques to analyse data from the British birth cohort studies, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the UK Household Longitudinal Study and most of her work has been funded by the ESRC or the European Research Council. She is currently Head of the UCL Research Department of Epidemiology & Public Health as well as Deputy Director of the ESRC International Center for Lifecouse Studies in Society & Health, a collaborative research center between UCL and the Universities of Manchester and Essex in the UK and Oreboro in Sweden.