Work life balance

How to raise your children? A question that is utterly important when you’re becoming mother/father. Nowadays, we have more opportunities, choices and demand upon us than ever before. You can choose for example to send your kids to boarding school, as Annelies mentioned, or make the choice to give up your professional career and stay home for the kids. Of course money is a very important part of the decision sometimes. When you're a single parent, giving up your job is out of the question. That’s why work-life balance is just so essential in our daily life. 

 Although our work environment has changed dramatically in the 21th century, you still need to balance your life. 

As I reflect on the relationship between parents and children, I think that a clear distinction needs to be made. When work and family life are continuously mixed, problems usually will follow. For example when one parent needs to travel a lot for work, the other one should be there for the children. As my father travels frequently for work, my mother stays at home to take care of me and my two brothers. 

Pauline Opdebeeck

Source: http://www.coolavenues.com/mba-journal/human-resources/work-life-balance

Low-income children

This article doesn’t tell us a thing about the relationship between parents and their kids, but it does give us usefull  information about the family situation of poor kids. It must be said that these statistics only apply to the United States, but I think that it can be a good indicator for Europe.

There are two influences that I’d like to discuss: family structure and race/ethnicity. The percent of children in low-income families isn’t influenced by the family structure, but it is highly influenced by the race/ethnicity. This first conclusion came as a real surprise to me, I used to think that kids with a single parent had a bigger chance of being poor. The second observation doesn’t come as a surprise, as racism is still a current phenomenon.

I must admit that most of these numbers really struck me, I had no idea they were this high. The most worrying evolution is the fact that the number of poor kids is increasing. This should really make it clear to the politicians that something has to be done to help these kids.

Annelies Troch

http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_678.html

Boarding schools

Are boarding schools good or bad for children? Has the absence of their parents an influence on their further life? These are questions we can ask ourselves when we think about the concept of sending kids to boarding schools. Boarding schools have always been a point of argument and they always will be, but in the past few years there have been some developments that are rather disturbing.

There can be two reasons to send your kid to boarding school: you don’t have enough time as a parent to take care of your child or the school/day care is too far away from home. As for the first reason, I can’t help to think that these parents should have thought about this before they got kids. As for the second reason, it depends on the age of the kids wether the reason is acceptable or not. It’s in my opinion that this reason is acceptable for kids who attend secondary school, but not for kids who go to day care or primary school. The differences  in quality between secondary schools can be a good reason to send your kid to a school that’s far away from home. The differences between day cares or primary schools aren’t that big and there  are more schools to choose from, so I don’t see why you should send your kid to a school far away from home.

It should already be clear that I’m not a huge fan of boarding schools for baby’s or young children. However, as Karlien Dhondt points out, it can happen that boarding school is in the best interest of the kids. This would be the case if there are serious reasons to doubt that the parents are able to take care of their children properly.

Annelies Troch

http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GPN2TVPTU
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GPN2TVPU8

How can you spend quality time with your teen?

As most parents don’t have a lot of time because of their busy schedules, children can’t have a lot of quality time with their mom and dad. But contrary to what Carol said, quality time isn’t only doing things with teenagers in order to teach them something, but it could be all sort of activities.

From a survey conducted in 2000, there were drawn some conclusions about how families are connecting with their teenagers. One of them showed that when teens are in need, they’ll turn to their parents. Most of them dependent on the personal advice of their close relatives.

However, the survey also showed disappointing results: a large number of families never sit together for meals. However, during mealtime, parents could ask questions about their child’s day without interruption. So when you have the opportunity to sit together for a meal, you should try to turn that moment into quality time. You could tell them about your day, but certainly avoid to interrupt them.

Moreover, there are a lot more ways to spend time together with your children. You could go to the movie with them, have a drink together, go shopping, cook together,... You could even take them to your work for a day. Personally, I think this can help to improve the relation between parents and their children. Of course they should do things teenagers like to do, otherwise they can’t tighten their bonds of friendship.

Vanessa Rys

source: http://www.teenagerstoday.com/resources/articles/qualitytime.htm

Quality vs quantity time: What are we doing today?

If you are surfing on the world wide web, you see a lot of blogs and articles from parents who ask themselves – and the rest of the world- if they are doing the parenting-thing right. Are they being a good parent? Should they spend their time with their kids in a different way? Do they have to feel guilty if they worked a whole day & then don’t want to entertain their offspring?

There is a whole discussion on whether to focus on quality or on quantity. Sitting in front of the T.V. with your kids is not considered quality time. It’s quantity time. Quality time is more defined as doing something with your kids that is active and that teaches them. Like going to the zoo or reading a book together. The kids learn something, they have fun. They spend time with their parents, who they see as their heroes. 

In my opinion , those activities could make these kids more inquisitive. This will extend to their education and therefore to their labour outcome. They ask for new information, because their parents have thought them to be curious by doing these things in their quality time. It’s another way of stimulating your kids for college. Not directly by saying ” now you have to study”, but indirectly by wanting them to know more.

If they ask the question: "what are we doing today?" I guess the correct answer is: “Today, I am going to tell you about the dinosaurs” or something like that.

Carol Tijtgat

Sources:

(1) http://www.pbs.org/parents/supersisters/archives/2009/07/quality-time-vs-quantity-time.html

(2) http://www.myupperroom.co.za/my-blog/quality-vs-quantity-our-.html

Telecommuting, to do or not to do?

Having a full-time job and spending time with your kids should be a good combination, but unfortunately this is rarely a fact. A lot of parents travel long distances towards work and being stuck in traffic jams is a daily event to them. This means little time to share with your family as the rest of the evening is absorbed by the normal day-to-day routine.

Nowadays employees in the ‘knowledge industries’ spend a lot of time working on computers, so in many cases this work can be done at home. There is no requirement to be physically in the office. This is why ‘telecommuting’ gains high interest these days. Working at least a day or two from home, can have its upsides. No need to lose hours by going to work, you can spend more time with your family, avoid the stress of traffic jams and you have more flexible hours. A no brainer.

Personally I think that when you’re still young and you live with your parents, telecommuting wouldn’t be suitable. You still have to build up your social network and contact at work is a crucial thing. Opposed to having a family, a lot of advantages go together with it.

Pauline Opdebeeck

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/aug/03/rise-working-from-home

Problems of lone parents finding a job to pay for childcare

There isn’t enough childcare for everyone who needs it. Another fact is that most of the people don’t want to take their child to a day-care centre to look after them.  Certainly, parent-child quality time is very important for lone parents.

Single parents bear a hard time when their children reach school age. They’ll have to work and they have to pay childcare. But first at all it isn’t easy for them to get a job. Sometimes their work commitments can’t be matched with their engagement as the sole carer of their children.

There are a lot of people who don’t want to work only to see grow up their children. Now there is a new policy that is more draconian as before, which eliminates the benefits for unemployed people. In that way it stimulates lone parents to search for work. Moreover, the government will save a big amount of money that they can spend on other urgent costs.

Personally, I think that’s a great idea. It’s may be a disadvantage for the single parents, because they’ll see their children less. But when they earn more as usual by working hard, they can give more to their children. After work, there is always time for parent-child quality time if they make an effort. 

Rys Vanessa

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/11/lone-parents-loss-benefits-children-five-school-age

Your parents or your toys?

As Annelies and Carol discussed single parenting and Vanessa talks about rich/poor moms, we can see that there are a lot of different situations that effects parent-child quality time. But how to define quality time? A daily chat at dinner? Watching tv together? Buy the latest toys for your kids?

First, we should not forget that our family situation will to a large extend define our lifestyle. But this doesn’t mean that a lower labour income will have a negative effect on the quality time with your kids. ‘Quality time’ can have different meanings for many parents. If you look at the total amount of money spent on presents for the kids as ‘quality time’, we sure don’t have a very good definition with that. Sadly in many cases, a lot of children will not value the parents for who they are, but for what they get... Those parents with a better relationship usually have educated their kids to value also immaterial things. Time spent together on trips, dinners, games,... everything where they enjoy each others' company. They usually feel loved and cared for and in many cases feel inspired by their parents.

Finally, we can define that the quantity of time spent with children is rather a good indicator of quality time. A good parent-child relationship starts when children are very young and actually never ends. Open communication and being available is key. But also doing sports, having a chat, going to the movies, playing boardgames, etc. My opinion is that by spending time together with your children, they will learn that it is the relationship that matters, not the material side of life.

 Pauline Opdebeeck

Source: http://singleparents.about.com/od/communicatingwiththekids/a/quality_time_2.htm

I’m the first born, how smart am I?

Your personality is formed during the years you live at home with your parents. Your environment effects the way you look at life.

But what if genes don’t matter? What is your personality is formed by your birth order?
I’m looking at two different articles and I tried to reflect it on my situation – a two-children family.
The first article tells us that first-borns get more quality time with their parents, therefore they are socially dominant, highly intellectual, and extremely conscientious. But they are also perfectionists. The middle one, they have more of a entrepreneurial spirit. The Benjamin nevertheless is very selfish. He got the attention of his parents and his older siblings and is not willing to give it up so easily.

A study by Joseph Price showed that in a two-children family the oldest one gets more time with his parents. 20 to 25 minutes a day. At any age, the second child gets less time to spend.

I come from a two children family and in my subjective way of seeing this study, I tend to believe what the authors are saying. I am always hanging around with friends, I’m never home during the weekends. But my younger brother, he loves staying at home. Being on his own.  He gets more quality-time with my parents, but looking at our possible labour outcomes, I think that we will both get a good job and a nice salary.

But that’s just my family…

Sources :

First study: http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Ed_First_Born_Only_How/

Study by Joseph Price : http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec06/RN.BirthOrder.html

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ782761&searchtype=keyword&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=EJ782761&_nfls=false

Tasks as a parent: equally divided or not?

In our culture, women are more likely to take care of young children. In that way, men and women don’t have equal opportunities to get a well-paid job. There should exist a system in which equal responsibility for children is the main aim.

As for the fathers, generally their career and their earnings are the most important things in life. But they’ll have to recognize that children are also important, and that their contribution to the education of their child is necessary. Once fathers will realize this, our culture could be changed.

It is clear that parents should take more family responsibilities than they do now. However, sometimes women work fulltime and at the same time they look after the children, while their husband is unemployed and doesn’t look for a job.  When this happens (and it does happens a lot!) a women seems to be on her own.  She has to do all the work for her boss and at home alone.  For this, I’ll refer to the first blog Annelies wrote. I think it should be an important improvement iIf the tasks would be divided equally, so the parent-child quality time would be optimal for the children.

What can also make a difference, in my opinion, is the fact that people have to take time to think about their life in the future with children. When you don’t have the time neither the money, it isn’t a great idea to have children.

Rys Vanessa

source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/reader-feedback-work-and-parenthood/

Homework or parent-child bonding and creative learning?

The Department of Education of Manila is promoting a ‘no weekend homework’ policy. It’s in their opinion that weekends should be about parent-child bonding and not about making homework.

I do get the idea of this policy and I do agree on some points, but some of the points are  way too extreme. It is so that parents should be able to spend time and do stuff with their kids on the weekends, but I don’t think that transforming weekends into holidays is the right way to make this happen.

It is here that working hours and labour income are important. As for the working hours, there are people who have to work on the weekends and who can’t spend more time with their kids. As a result these kids would be left to do whatever they want and this can cause some problems. As for the effect of labour incomes on the weekend, some parents just can’t afford it to do these trips with their kids.

As for what Carol discussed in her blog, I think that she really nailed it. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if the parents are divorced, if they have a high income, etc. The most important thing is that the parents love their kids and that they are capable taking care of them. (As we know, loving your kids, doesn’t always guarantee that they are taken care of properly.)

Annelies Troch

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/09/29/10/no-homework-weekends-time-parent-child-bonding-and-creative-learning

The impact of a parent leaving the family and children’s labour outcomes .

As Annelies already said in her blog (The effects of single parenting), the absence of a parent has its effects on an individual's labour market outcome.

In the article (The impact of parentel divorce or death on adolescents' eductaion & earnings), the authors refer to different studies which all have the same finding: the absence of a parent has some effect. 

But they disagree on what that exactly effect is. Some say that when the change in the family structure happens during the young adulthood, it will have an effect on the labour market outcomes of these individuals.

Children who were raised in a regular family are more likely to attend college and graduate. With a regular family, I mean: Mom, Dad and children. No stepfathers or stepmothers.
 In my opinion, I cannot say that I completely agree with this statement. Children from divorced parents are also perfectly able to attend and graduate college. It may be that it is less likely, but I don’t see why the family structure is an element that defines their labour market outcome. 
It is so, as Annelies said, that in a two-parent-family both parents help around. The parents will place themselves in different roles.

When there are two persons, they can divide the different chores and spend an approximately equal amount of quality-time with their offspring. This giving the children a stable situation to grow up. In this way their chances of going to college are increased.
This is also possible with a stepmother or stepfather. My theory is that the absence of a parent only has an effect when the situation at home is not stable. This can be matter if the single parent works too much or the single parent does not spend enough quality-time with their kid. So it feels neglect and it might search the attention of his parent in a wrong way.

Therefore, I conclude that the impact of a parent leaving  is not a bad thing when there is still enough parent-child quality-time.

Carol Tijtgat

Source : The impact of parentel divorce or death on adolescents' eductaion & earnings

Who suffers most from a baby, rich or poor moms?

For some people , childbirth isn’t so easy when it comes to money. Sometimes  individuals don’t understand problems of other people living in different circumstances than their own. But who suffers most?

Everyone assumes that highly paid women suffer a bigger economic penalty, as they have more earnings to lose. But based on an analysis, two sociologists have proved that it’s just the other part of the population pyramid who has difficulties.
Their analysis separates seven groups of different earnings, each group was based on non-Hispanic white women. After following them up, different conclusions could be made.
On the one hand, lower paid women have less involvement in their company, so if they can’t combine the child-care arrangements with their job, they are forced to cycle in and out of jobs.
On the other hand, women with higher earnings mostly have a good career.  When  they become a mother, they receive many advantages. It’s also much easier for them to hire nannies.

Nowadays, we see fewer new mothers, but more old, poor mothers with poor children. This should ring a bell: people should be more interested to these trends.

Rys Vanessa

source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/rich-mom-poor-mom/

The effects of single parenting

 

The number of single parents has increased a lot in the past few years. As this number will probably continue to grow, it is important to study the effects of single parenting on the children.

 

Single parents have to do everything on their own, they don't have a partner to help them if necessarily. On top of that, most of these parents have to work fulltime. The combination of the huge amount of responsability towards their kids and their boss, can cause a lot of stress.

 

It's obvious that single parenting isn't easy on the adults, but it sure isn't easy on the kids either. The stress of the parents can be reflected on the life of the kids and they are often faced with social problems or lower academic results.

 

Most off these effects aren't just temporarily, but have an influence on the further life of the kids, which makes it obvious that solutions are required. One of these solutions is asking for help. This help can come from friends and family, but even from doctors or Child Welfare.

 

Annelies Troch

 

http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Are-the-Effects-of-Single-Parenting?---Surviving-As-a-Single-Parent&id=1660579

Relation between parent-child quality time and education

As most children like to have more quality time with their parents, we’re not always aware of the positive effect it has on our lives. During the 1960’s American parents spent less time on child care compared by the mid-1990’s. This increase may be the result of the rise in competitiveness of college admissions. Educated parents pay more attention to this preparation  time than less educated parents, as well as their rivalry for those admissions gives them a boost to compete. In this case we talk about older children as they get ready to apply for college.  

On the one hand research(1) has shown that the more effort parents put on child quality time, the harder children work at school and the better their performance will be. On the other hand their performance is not influenced by their social background. Parents’ effort is more important than the school’s effort and this is more important than the children’s own effort. 

Personally I think that parents want the best for their children. They attach importance to their education as they consider it crucial for their future. The more educated parents are, the more they prefer a good education for their children.

Pauline Opdebeeck

Sources:         (1)  Sciencedaily  

                            (2)  Economix 

Can parent-child quality time help decrease rivalry between siblings?

It is common that siblings fight. Sometimes they fight over the controller of the TV, sometimes over a cookie. But that is what they do. And it happens frequently. A lot of parents wondered why theirs children fight so often.

Well, here is a simple answer: jealousy
Sibling rivalry can be explained by the fact that every child wants quality time with his mom or his dad.

When children feel that their brother or sister gets more attention, they can feel left out or alone. So they pick a fight to get attention from their parents.
This can cause a lot of stress for both children as parents. Being blamed by a sibling for breaking a vase or drawing on the walls, which they didn’t do, can have its effects on how you are able to interact with colleagues . Trust is very important in your working life. You should be able to trust the people you work with. But never being able to trust your brother/sister, can make you suspicious in trusting you colleagues.

So the author of the articles advices to spend equal one on one quality time with each child, so that jealous feelings can be reduced.

Carol Tijtgat

Source: http://www.suite101.com/content/parent-quality-time-helps-siblings-relationship-a109786