Christensen Kathleen, Schneider Barbara, Butler Donnell
Michigan State University, USA.
Future Child. 2011 Fall;21(2):69-90. doi: 10.1353/foc.2011.0016.
Most working parents face a common dilemma--how to care for their children when they are not in school but the parents are at work. In this article Kathleen Christensen, Barbara Schneider, and Donnell Butler describe the predictable and unpredictable scheduling demands school-age children place on working couples and single working parents. The authors assess the potential capacity of schools to help meet the needs of working families through changes in school schedules and after-school programs and conclude that the flexibility parents need to balance family-work responsibilities probably cannot be found in the school setting. They argue that workplaces are better able than schools to offer the flexibility that working parents need to attend to basic needs of their children, as well as to engage in activities that enhance their children's academic performance and emotional and social well-being. Two types of flexible work practices seem especially well suited to parents who work: flextime arrangements that allow parents to coordinate their work schedules with their children's school schedules, and policies that allow workers to take short periods of time off--a few hours or a day or two-to attend a parent-teacher conference, for example, or care for a child who has suddenly fallen ill. Many companies that have instituted such policies have benefited through employees' greater job satisfaction and employee retention. Yet despite these measured benefits to employers, workplaces often fall short of being family friendly. Many employers do not offer such policies or offer them only to employees at certain levels or in certain types of jobs. Flexible work practices are almost nonexistent for low-income workers, who are least able to afford alternative child care and may need flexibility the most. Moreover the authors find that even employees in firms with flexible practices such as telecommuting may be reluctant to take advantage of them, because the workplace culture explicitly or implicitly stigmatizes or penalizes employees for choosing these work arrangements. The authors conclude by making a case for creating a workplace culture that supports flexibility. Such a culture, they argue, would enable working parents to better meet the responsibilities of their jobs as they care for and build strong relationships with their children.
大多数有工作的父母都面临一个共同的困境——孩子不上学而父母却要上班时，如何照顾孩子。在本文中，凯瑟琳·克里斯滕森、芭芭拉·施奈德和唐奈尔·巴特勒描述了学龄儿童对在职夫妇和单亲在职父母可预测和不可预测的日程安排需求。作者评估了学校通过改变校历和课后项目来帮助满足在职家庭需求的潜在能力，并得出结论，父母平衡家庭与工作责任所需的灵活性可能无法在学校环境中找到。他们认为，与学校相比，工作场所更有能力提供在职父母照顾孩子基本需求所需的灵活性，以及参与有助于提高孩子学业成绩、情感和社交幸福感的活动所需的灵活性。两种灵活的工作方式似乎特别适合有工作的父母：弹性工作时间安排，使父母能够将工作时间表与孩子的学校时间表相协调；以及允许员工短时间休假（几个小时、一天或两天）的政策，例如参加家长会或照顾突然生病的孩子。许多制定了此类政策的公司都因员工更高的工作满意度和更低的员工流失率而受益。然而，尽管这些政策给雇主带来了切实的好处，但工作场所往往仍不够家庭友好。许多雇主不提供此类政策，或者只向特定级别或特定类型工作的员工提供。低收入工人几乎没有灵活的工作方式，而他们最负担不起替代托儿服务，可能也最需要灵活性。此外，作者发现，即使是在有远程办公等灵活工作方式的公司工作的员工，也可能不愿意利用这些方式，因为工作场所文化明确或含蓄地对选择这些工作安排的员工进行污名化或惩罚。作者最后主张营造一种支持灵活性的工作场所文化。他们认为，这样一种文化将使在职父母在照顾孩子并与孩子建立牢固关系的同时，更好地履行工作职责。
