What does family-friendly really mean? Wellbeing, time, and the quality of parents' jobs.

Abstract

We present a brief index of parent job quality, classifying jobs by four working conditions: paid parental leave, perceived security, control and flexible work times. Jobs vary from optimal (with all conditions) to poor (none or one condition), and we describe differences in mothers 'and fathers job quality by education; work hours; and casual, fixed-term or permanent employment. Analyses are based on a large, nationally representative sample of parents with children aged 4-5 years (the Growing Up in Australia study; N=2,164 mothers; 2,614 fathers). Fathers were more likely to have higher quality jobs than mothers, but both had poorer quality jobs if employed casually or part-time. High-quality jobs were associated with better parent wellbeing, a finding replicated in a second, smaller study. Sustaining the wellbeing of working parents should be an aim of family friendliness. The index gives workplaces and government a way to benchmark and evaluate parents' jobs.

Introduction

Working parents must manage paid work and caring for children; family friendliness describes jobs that help them do both. Conventionally, family friendliness refers to flexible work hours, paid maternity or paternity leave, and time off to care for sick children. These conditions are important in part because they promote more equitable access to paid work for mothers, who usually do most of the child caring. They remove some of the time barriers faced by employed parents and so reduce pressures on family life and family relationships. But perhaps family friendliness means more than this. Not all jobs are equal, and poor working conditions can erode wellbeing (Broom et al. 2006). Sustaining the wellbeing of employed parents has not been an explicit aim of family friendliness, and if it were, a broader range of conditions would be considered.

Addressing this omission, we discuss job conditions that affect parent wellbeing. This paper then develops a brief index of parent job quality, aiming to capture working conditions affecting parent wellbeing as well as provisions for time-related support. Based on recent Australian data, the index summarises information about job conditions into a single descriptor. Our index can be used by workplaces and researchers to characterise and evaluate jobs, by businesses to track industry performance, and by policy-makers to monitor national progress on family friendliness. The paper also considers the benefits and drawbacks of our enlarged definition of family friendliness. We discuss the issues for policy and for business as Australia confronts the twin pressures of a global economy and an ageing population.

Why Is Wellbeing Important To Family Friendliness?

Typically, family friendliness has been defined in terms of conditions and work practices that help employees balance work and family (DEWRSB 1998, p. 3). The meaning and measurement of work-family balance is not explicit, and in practice family-friendly provisions have been primarily focused on time. Access to paid maternity and paternity leave, workplace child care, parental leave or time off of to care for sick children, flexible start and stop times and the option to work part-time are all examples of practices that can free parent time. In addition, work practices and conditions shape family life and children's care through their influence on parent wellbeing. For families and children, parent wellbeing is an essential resource, underpinning the quality of parenting and family relationships. For example, depressed parents are more withdrawn, angry and sad, and this affects the quality of marital and parent-child relationships (Coyne, Thompson and Palmer 2002; Downey and Coyne 1990; Lovejoy et al. 2000). Consequently, we argue that wellbeing and time are both essential ingredients for work and family balance and should be incorporated into assessments of family friendliness.

Wellbeing is not the same as absence of disease or disability, although it encompasses physical and mental health. Wellbeing also entails an adequate standard of living, happiness, and, in the context of families, close, supportive relationships and care-giving (for similar definitions see Families Australia 2006, and the World Health Organization 1948). The lives and wellbeing of parents and children are closely interlinked, so jobs supporting the wellbeing of employed parents have the potential to reach across generations and influence children's outcomes.

Recent research on part-time work draws attention to the need for an expanded notion of family-friendly work. In Australia, part-time jobs are a common family-friendly option, especially for mothers (OECD 2002). Part-time work enables mothers to earn income, and reduce their exclusion from the labour market and their financial dependence on partners or the state. Working part-time also frees time to care for children, help out at school, and run the household. However, many part-time jobs have poor pay and conditions and they are more likely to be casual or insecure (Charlesworth et a12002). These aspects of jobs could have an adverse impact on wellbeing, but to date they have not been considered within the ambit of family friendliness.

Job Security, Control and Wellbeing

There is consistent international epidemiological evidence relating work practices and conditions to a range of adverse health outcomes, including heart disease, depression and anxiety (Cheng et al. 2000; Stansfeld and Candy 2006; Theorell and Karasek 1996). Workload, security, job control and supportive work relationships are therefore key work-related determinants of employee wellbeing, and so could be considered elements of family-friendly jobs. In this paper we focus primarily on incorporating job security and control, although we also note alternative definitions of job quality that include other work practices and conditions.

Job security and control are related to management practices and wider industrial relations. We focus on these two aspects of work because they are especially important to employee mental health (Stansfeld and Candy 2006). Research on employed Australians replicates international evidence, finding consistent and strong associations of job insecurity and low control with symptoms of anxiety and depression (D'Souza et al. 2003).

Job security refers to the perceived probability of, and impact from, losing one's job (Ferrie 2001). Job control refers to having a say over work tasks and how they are performed (Muntaner et al. 2006). Perceived insecurity is not the same as contingent jobs or casual employment, although people with temporary or casual contracts tend to report more insecurity (DeWitte and Naswall 2003). Threats to job security can occur across all forms of employment, particularly during workplace restructuring, outsourcing or downsizing (Ferrie et al. 2001). People's perceptions of insecurity correlate with eventual job loss. For example, 38 per cent of UK employees who had previously said they were very likely to lose their job did in fact lose their job 12 to 15 months later. By contrast, only five per cent of employees who thought they were very unlikely to lose their job were made redundant during the same period (Green 2006). For parents, job insecurity also poses a threat to the family's economic resources and income.

Job control reflects the way work is organised and managed, including how far employees are engaged in decisions about their work. To some extent it is based on trust and the balance of power in the employment relationship, with high control giving employees more capacity to fit their job requirements around their own and their family's needs (Glass and Finley 2002). In fact, control is already considered part of family friendliness, albeit in a limited way. Flexible work hours, where parents can vary their start and stop times, and give parents control over their work times, are an element of job control.

Thus, family-friendly jobs could involve a combination of work conditions and practices, including both time-related conditions such as flexibility and access to leave, and wellbeing-related conditions such as security and control. We use the term 'parent job quality' to represent these sets of conditions and work practices. Green (2006 p. 9) defines job quality as 'the set of work features which foster the wellbeing of the worker'. According to Green (2006) these features are skill, effort, control, wages and risk (risk includes job security and health or safety risks). Other definitions of job quality add training, interesting (not monotonous) work, adequate resources, security, participation and work-life balance to the characteristics of high-quality jobs (Brisbois 2003; Chalmers, Campbell and Charlesworth 2005). Job quality is, therefore, a broad concept capturing a range of employment practices and conditions, including provisions conventionally labelled family friendly. The concept can allow policy-makers, workplaces and researchers to move beyond a narrow assessment of provisions or practices to more comprehensively assess jobs.

In this paper we apply the concept of job quality to parents' jobs. We define parent job quality as working conditions and practices affecting parent wellbeing as well as those providing time-related support to parents. We then use two studies to develop an index to assess job quality. The first study presents a measure of parent job quality that includes job security and control, along with access to paid parental leave and work hour flexibility. The index categorises jobs by the presence of these conditions and work practices, with poor-quality jobs characterised by none or one of these conditions, and high-quality jobs characterised by all four. Using this index we examine which parents have access to high-quality jobs, what sorts of jobs tend to be high or low quality, and whether parents report different wellbeing based on the quality of their job. A second study presents a longer, multiple-item measure of work conditions and practices. The two studies enable comparison of the performance and findings of a short versus longer version of the measure.

Method

Data Source and Study Population

Growing Up in Australia, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), is a nationally representative sample of families and gathers data on both mothers and fathers where possible. (1) This study used data collected in 2004 from families with 4-5 year old children (N = 4,976 families). Face-to-face interviews and a mail-back self-complete survey were used to collect information about the primary care-giver's (and where relevant the other parent or care-giver's) background, employment status and job characteristics. Response rates for the self-complete questionnaire (which contained the job and wellbeing items) were 84 per cent for primary care-givers (mostly mothers) and 79 per cent for the second parent (mostly fathers). The sample was further restricted to mothers and fathers who had worked at least one hour in the previous week in a paid job, yielding a final sample of currently employed parents with children aged 4-5 (N= 2,164 mothers and 2,614 fathers).

Table 1 presents the socio-demographic characteristics of the sample. Briefly, three-quarters of mothers worked part-time, while nearly all fathers (94 per cent) worked full-time. Over half of these parents were permanently employed. Almost 10 per cent of mothers were single parents (compared with less than one per cent of fathers), and more than half of the families had two dependent children. Most mothers (72 per cent) and fathers (76 per cent) had completed some form of post-secondary education, and the median income range for the families was between $52,000 and $77,999.

Measures

Parent Job Quality

The four components of job quality assessed in the LSAC were job control, perceived security, work hour flexibility and access to paid family--related leave. Control, security and flexibility were measured with single items (see Table 2 for items, score cut-offs and response descriptions), while access to paid family leave was assessed by two items (access to paid maternity/parental leave and access to paid family or personal leave (2)). Each item was coded so that high scores were positive and then dichotomised, so 1 represented presence of a positive condition or practice, while 0 represented its absence. For example, feeling secure or very secure about the job was scored 1, while 0 indicated parents were either not very secure or very insecure.

The job quality index for parents (JQIP) was then calculated by summing the four dichotomised components of job quality. The original scoring was across five categories: 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4. Categories 0 and 1 were subsequently combined as few participants had jobs with none of the component conditions, yielding four final categories of parent job quality: 0-1 (poor quality, none or one positive condition), 2 (two out of four positive conditions), 3 (three out of four positive conditions), and 4 (optimal, all four positive conditions). (3)

Parent Wellbeing

Three indicators assessed parent wellbeing. Psychological distress was measured using the Kessler K6 screening scale for adults (Kessler et al 2002; Kessler et al 1998). Six items measured symptoms of depression or anxiety over the past four weeks (e.g., 'did you feel nervous?' 'did you feel hopeless?', 'did you feel everything was an effort?'). Symptom frequency was coded using responses from 0 (none of the time) to 4 (all of the time) and summed to give a score ranging from 0 to 24. The original cut-off score for this scale was 13, indicating serious, disabling mental illness (Kessler et al 2003). We used a less extreme score of 7 to capture common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety, termed psychological distress. Using this cut-off, 13 per cent of mothers and 10 per cent of fathers reported psychological distress. An established item (Prior et al. 2000) asking parents how well they thought that they were coping (1 = not at all to 5 = extremely well) assessed parent coping. We assessed self-rated health with a single question shown to be predictive of later morbidity and mortality (response categories: excellent, very good, good, fair or poor; Idler and Benyamini 1997).

Socio-demographic Measures

Four socio-demographic variables were used in the analyses. Work hours were categorised as either part-time (1-34 hours per week) or full-time (35 hours or more per week). Four categories assessed highest completed level of education: up to year 12, certificate/diploma, graduate degree, and post-graduate degree. Employment contract was categorised by contract type: permanent; fixed-term; and casual. Parent's report of their before tax or superannuation (gross) yearly income, for both parents (where applicable), and including pensions and allowances, assessed household income.

Statistical Method

Chi-square tests compared the proportions of parents across categories of job quality by gender and work hours, by education and by employment contract. Pearson's product-moment correlations estimated the linear association between parent wellbeing and job quality. One-way ANOVAs were conducted for parents with the poorest quality jobs to assess gender and work-hour differences in wellbeing. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS[TM].

Results

Parent Job Quality

First, we examined access to each of the job quality components for mothers and fathers by their work hours (see Table 3). Chi-square tests indicated significant differences across the four groups for three of the four components (the tests do not specify which pairs of groups differ from each other). We found gender and work hour differences with control ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 8.58, p < .035), security ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 31.66, p < .001), and paid family-related leave ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 274.02, p < .001), but not with flexible work times ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 1.985, ns). Part-time jobs were the most likely to lack good quality conditions or work practices. Eighteen per cent (nearly one-fifth) of mothers employed part-time had jobs with poor control, proportionally more than mothers in fulltime jobs or fathers in part- or full-time jobs. Fathers in part-time jobs were the most insecure, but fathers in full-time jobs showed better security than all other groups. Between 17 and 21 per cent of mothers and fathers could not change their start and stop times if needed, and this figure did not differ by gender or by work hours. Finally, one-third of mothers and one-fifth of fathers employed part-time had access to paid family-related leave, a proportion only half that of mothers and fathers in full-time jobs.

Distribution of Poor-Quality and High-Quality Jobs

Next, we combined the four job conditions and practices into the overarching construct 'job quality'. Then we investigated differences in mothers' and fathers' job quality by work hours (see Table 3), parent education (see Figure 1) and employment contract (see Figure 2). There were significant differences in the proportion of mothers and fathers working full-time and part-time for every category of job quality: from the poorest quality ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 27.59, p < .001), for jobs with two of the four components ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 37.31, p < .001), three of the four ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 32.56, p < .001), and optimal jobs ([chi square] (3, n = 4778) = 174.08, p < .001). The contrast is particularly stark for fathers, who tended to have both the worst and the best jobs: over 12 per cent of fathers employed part-time were in the poorest quality job compared with 5 per cent of full-time employed fathers. Similar differences by gender and work hours are apparent for parents with access to only two of the four component conditions. Considering both of these lowest categories together clearly demonstrates the job quality gap. Over 40 per cent of fathers and 30 per cent of mothers in part-time jobs were in the two lowest categories of the JQIP. This compares with 21 per cent of fathers and 25 per cent of mothers in full-time jobs. At the other end of the quality spectrum, over a third of full-time employed fathers and mothers had optimal jobs with control, security, flexibility and paid family-related leave, significantly more than mothers or fathers in part-time jobs.

Education may determine parents' access to good or poor-quality jobs. Figure 1 charts the proportion of parents with poor, mid and optimal quality jobs against their highest educational attainment. Generally, more years of education are linked to better quality jobs, as indicated by the increased proportion of parents with optimal jobs (white shading) among those with graduate and post-graduate qualifications. However, education does not protect mothers and fathers equally from the poorest quality jobs. As educational attainment goes up, the proportion of fathers in poor quality jobs (shaded black) goes down. Thus, 7.6 per cent of fathers with up to year 12 schooling worked in poor quality jobs, compared to 2.4 per cent of fathers with a completed post-graduate degree. Yet the proportion of mothers in poorest quality jobs remains virtually unchanged; indeed, the risk slightly increases with educational attainment. Six per cent of mothers with year 12 schooling worked in poor quality jobs, compared with 8.1 per cent of with mothers with a post-graduate degree.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Permanent, fixed-term and casual contracts also show distinctive job quality profiles (see Figure 2). There were few optimal casual jobs. (4) Instead, casual jobs were much more likely to be poor quality, and this was especially so for fathers, where 31.1 per cent worked in jobs offering none or only one positive condition. In contrast, relatively more permanent jobs were good to optimal quality; (5) indeed, almost half of mothers (43.8 per cent) and fathers (51 per cent) with permanent contracts had optimal jobs. Fixed-term job quality appeared to be about midway--worse than permanent contract jobs but still better than casual jobs.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Job Quality and Parent Wellbeing

Finally, we compared parent wellbeing by job quality. There were three indicators of wellbeing: psychological distress, perceived coping, and self-rated health. Associations with job quality are illustrated in Figures 3, 4 and 5. Statistical estimates of the association adjusted for education and income are noted with each figure.

The figures present a consistent finding: the best wellbeing is almost always found among parents with high quality jobs. Conversely, parents in the poorest quality jobs showed the worst wellbeing. Thus, parents showed better mental health and were more likely to report better coping when they worked in jobs that gave them access to paid family-related leave, flexible hours, control over how they did their work, and security. Self-rated health showed a slightly different pattern. Although parents in the worst quality jobs had the poorest self-rated health, there were few differences among mothers across the other three job quality categories. Fathers' health, on the other hand, showed a clearer job-quality gradient.

Furthermore, the relationship between wellbeing and job quality was significant (see notes below figures) for both mothers and fathers, and for jobs with full- or part-time hours (except fathers working part-time, probably due to the small sample size). Psychological distress had the strongest relationship with job quality, suggesting that a parent's mental health is particularly influenced by the quality of their job.

Our data also suggest that mothers working full-time may be especially vulnerable. One-way ANOVAs with post-hoc Sheffe pairwise comparisons were conducted for parents in poor quality jobs to test for any gender and work hour differences. There were no group differences in psychological distress. However, coping differed significantly across the four groups (F(3,298)=4.81, p=.003) with mothers working full-time reporting worse coping than mothers working part-time (p=.006). Self-rated health also varied across the groups (F(3,302)=3.01, p=.031) and again mothers employed full-time were worse off compared with mothers working part-time (p=.048).

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Alternative Measures Of Job Quality

The JQIP provides a brief, simple method for calculating the quality of parent jobs. But there are other ways to measure job quality, with different strengths and drawbacks, so we briefly present preliminary development of an alternative approach. Our reasons for presenting this preliminary work are twofold. First, we wanted to assess the consistency of our findings across two samples. Second, it demonstrates the way brief measures can reduce precision. The LSAC measure is based on five items, but such brevity can lead to measurement error, possibly underestimating associations with variables of interest. We therefore present a longer, 32-item version of the JQIP (the JQIP+).

The sample comes from the Health for Life (H4L) study, drawn from employed mothers (n=200) and fathers (n=134) working in the retail or public service sectors in the ACT. Compared with LSAC families, H4L parents tended to have fewer and older children and a higher median income. Mothers were also more likely to be working full-time, and relatively more parents (90 per cent of mothers and 95 per cent of fathers) were permanently employed compared with LSAC parents. Because only nine fathers were working part-time they were not included in H4L analyses.

Table A1 (appended) describes the four components of this expanded measure of job quality (job quality for parents plus or JQIP+), providing sample items, cutoffs and scoring approach (a full sample description and list of items and sources is available from the authors). Table A2 shows mothers and fathers in the H4L sample who had jobs with or without each of these JQIP+ components. Because this is a non-representative sample, percentages reflect both self-selection and provisions in the retail and public service sectors, which are not typical of other sectors (Strazdins et al. 2006).

Compared to the LSAC, H4L parents tended to have more job security, control and flexibility; however, similar proportions of mothers employed part-time and fathers employed full-time lacked access to a range of family-friendly provisions. Nearly two-thirds of mothers employed full-time lacked access to family-friendly provisions (double the proportion of LSAC), which might reflect the sectors from which the sample were drawn. The H4L measure points to the same gender differences in access to quality jobs. Fathers employed full-time were the most likely to have optimal jobs compared with mothers employed either full- or part-time. Mothers employed full- and part-time showed similar percentages for both poorest and optimal job quality. The main differences were in the middle two categories. Mothers working part-time were more likely to be in the second lowest job quality category, but less likely to be in the second highest, compared with mothers employed full-time.

Figure A1 (appended) charts depressive symptoms against JQIP+ categories. As with the LSAC, both mothers' and fathers' mental health shows a linear 'dose-response' relationship with the quality of their job. Better mental health is associated with optimal jobs, and the poorest mental health with the worst quality jobs. Associations with the parent's mental health are stronger for the JQIP+ scores than the LSAC, reflecting the fuller measurement of components.

Conclusion We argue that helping parents manage time pressures and sustaining their wellbeing are both integral to family friendliness. Our aim, therefore, has been to develop a brief index of family-friendly conditions and practices that can be used to characterise jobs. The index covers a broader range of conditions than previously considered family friendly and includes job security and control, along with two time-related provisions: flexible start and stop times, and paid family-related leave.

Our findings indicate that job quality matters to parents' mental health, coping and self-rated health. Parents with optimal jobs (i.e., with security, control, flexibility and paid family-related leave) had better wellbeing on all indicators than parents in poor quality jobs. This is consistent with epidemiological research showing both cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between job security and control, and mental and physical health (Ferrie 2001; Stansfeld and Candy 2006; Theorell and Karasek 1996).

Job quality also varies by type of job. Our second key finding, consistent with other Australian research (Charlesworth et al. 2002), is that full-time jobs are often higher quality than part-time. This job-quality divide is gendered in its impact and implications. It is especially marked for fathers, whose jobs are both the best (if working full-time) and worst (if working part-time). However, very few fathers work part-time. On the other hand, three-quarters of mothers in our LSAC sample work part-time; indeed, part-time work has been a central strategy used by Australian mothers to manage work and family commitments. Nor are mothers protected from poor quality jobs by better education. Our data indicate some mothers, even those with post-graduate qualifications, make a trade-off between more time for family and worse conditions, at a potential cost to their own wellbeing. Furthermore, fathers also face a quality and wellbeing trade-off if they work part-time, which, in our view, undermines strategies to redress the gender imbalance in caring and paid work. Indeed our study raises questions about whether part-time jobs should be considered family friendly at all, unless they also meet acceptable quality criteria. The study also points to the job quality gap, along with earnings and wages, as another indicator of gender equality in the labour market.

This study is the first to reconceptualise family friendliness to include work practices and conditions that support parent wellbeing. We developed an index, the JQIE adding job security and control to time-related family-friendly provisions, because of the epidemiological evidence linking these work conditions to health and wellbeing. A further strength was to compare the performance of the measure and the consistency of findings using two different samples of employed parents: a large, nationally representative sample, and a smaller, in-depth study. The second study, using a multi-item measure of job quality, also illustrates an important qualification to the five-item JQIR Because the shorter measure relies on single item measures of work conditions, it could underestimate associations with parent wellbeing.

The data and approach used here have two limitations which we now consider. First, the study is cross-sectional, and hence cannot show if the associations we observe are causal. Parents with poorer coping and health may 'drift' into poor quality jobs, which may explain the observed associations. Second, there are important omissions in the way job quality has been conceptualised. Neither the JQIP nor JQIP+ includes training and career development, supervisor support, pay or other benefits, safety, or work intensity. Indeed, Green's (2006), Chalmers, Campbell and Charlesworth's (2005) and Brisbois' (2003) definitions of job quality encompasses a wider range of work practices than those included in the JQIP. Data on these aspects of jobs were not available in the LSAC, and an important next task is to develop a more comprehensive measure that is still brief and easy to use.

The study raises questions about how Australian working parents will fare in the future. Casual employees now constitute 27 per cent of Australia's workforce, compared with 19 per cent a decade ago (ABS 1999). In response to global labour competition and the need to preserve a competitive economic base, policy has remained focused on further labour flexibility and deregulation. But the high proportion of poor quality jobs among casually employed parents points to a potential divergence between high quality, permanent jobs and an underclass of poor quality jobs without these conditions (Kalleberg, Reskin and Hudson 2000).

On the other hand, the population is ageing, and maximising and sustaining labour force participation of working-age adults (including parents) is becoming a national priority. It is critical that policy-makers address both global pressures and the social and economic challenges of Australia's changing demography. If jobs do not support parents' wellbeing and help them manage caring, then working adults may choose not to have children, accelerating the population age imbalance and threatening future economic growth. Those who become parents may reduce their participation, leaving the labour force intermittently or entirely, again eroding the economic base needed to support an ageing population. Alternatively, if parents stay in jobs that are hard to combine with caring, or that compromise their own and their children's wellbeing, it could increase the burden of mental disorder which in turn would impair economic productivity and participation. Thus the OECD has suggested that too few babies, too little employment, or the long-term erosion of family wellbeing will be outcomes of not achieving better work and family balance (OECD 2005, p. 10). All three scenarios have consequences for social equity, for health and aged care costs, and for the nation's economic success. Maximising job quality for parents provides a way forward that may both encourage and sustain participation without a cost to wellbeing.

Quality of life, of which job quality is a central component, is important to governments and to citizens, but optimising job quality for parents is not simple. For government it will require cross-portfolio engagement and collaboration so that initiatives from one portfolio do not inadvertently undermine another's. Furthermore, it is not clear whether policy should tackle the broad notion of job quality (which may yield the most benefits, but is both ambitious and practically difficult), or should address sub-components (for example, by supporting managers to design jobs to give employees better control). The benefits to family health and wellbeing, and to the economy, are likely to be long term. But addressing the quality of parents' jobs will also carry costs. These costs, especially if they are borne by business, could be politically contentious and may impose unequal burdens on some, especially the smaller enterprises. On the other hand, if business cannot afford to improve job quality and governments do not act, then the costs will be borne by families and the scenarios forecast by the OECD in 2005 become likely. Family friendliness is, therefore, more than just part-time work, access to leave or flexible work hours. It encompasses the way work is designed and organised. For parents and families, having a good quality job matters.

Appendices 

Table A1: Sample items, score ranges and cut-points for the job
quality index for parents plus (JQIP+)

Components               Sample items         Score      Cut-
(number of items)                             range     point *

Job Control (15)    I have a good deal of      1-4     [greater
                    say in work decisions              than or
                                                      equal to] 3
                    Do you have a choice in
                    what to do?

                    Do you have to do the
                    same thing over and
                    over?

Job Security (4)    How secure do you feel     1-4     [greater
                    in current job?                     than or
                                                       equal to]
                    How likely is it you                  2.5
                    will lose your job in
                    the next couple of
                    years?

Flexibility (4)     I have a say over how      1-5     [greater
                    many hours I work                   than or
                                                      equal to] 3
                    I have a say over
                    start-finish times

Paid family         I have access to           1-4     [greater
leave, and other    permanent part time                 than or
provisions (9)      work                              equal to] 3

                    I have access to paid
                    family leave

                    I have the chance to
                    work at home sometimes

                                 Response coding *
Components
(number of items)          1                        0

Job Control (15)    Sometimes, Often          Never, Rarely

Job Security (4)    Secure, Extremely         Moderately secure,
                    secure, or Very           Insecure, or Likely,
                    unlikely, Unlikely        Very likely

Flexibility (4)     Strongly agree, Agree,    Disagree, Strongly
                    Neither agree nor         disagree
                    disagree

Paid family         Yes, easily, Yes but      No, definitely not
leave, and other    with some difficulty'
provisions (9)

Table A2: Parent job quality (JQIP+), by full- and
part-time hours (H4L)

                                   Mothers (%)         Fathers (%)

                            Part-time     Full-time     Full-time
                              n=105         n=95          n=134

                              With (without) job quality component

Control                    68.6 (31.4)   86.3 (13.7)   70.9 (29.1)
Security                   96.2 (3.8)    89.5 (10.5)   94.0 (6.0)
Flexibility                75.2 (24.8)   70.5 (29.5)   79.1 (20.9)
Family leave/ provisions   39.0 (61.0)   36.8 (63.2)   56.0 (44.0)

                                       JQIP+ categories

0-1 Poor quality               9.5          10.5          13.1
2                             29.5          17.9          16.8
3                             32.4          46.3          25.5
4 Optimal                     28.6          25.3          44.5

[FIGURE A1 OMITTED]

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Emma George and Sharryn Sims for their help with data and methods. This study was supported with funding from the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund and the NH&MRC (Health for Life/study, project grant 224200). We thank the families and workplaces that gave their time to participate in the Health for Life! study, Shannon Meyerkort and the team of fieldworkers who helped make the study possible.

We thank all involved in the Growing Up in Australia study. Growing Up in Australia was initiated and funded as part of the Australian Government's Stronger Families and Communities Strategy by the Australian Government Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. The study is being undertaken in partnership with the Australian Institute of Family Studies, with advice being provided by a consortium of leading researchers at research institutions and universities throughout Australia. The data collection is undertaken for the Institute by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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Notes

(1) Lower educated mothers were marginally under-represented (Soloff et al. 2006).

(2) Employed parents who had access to one or both of these provisions were coded 1, employees with none coded 0. Self-employed parents (28.7 per cent of fathers and 24.3 per cent of mothers) were coded zero for both these items as they were not asked these two questions in the interview

(3) An alternative way of developing the JQIP measure would have been to create a scale by summing items. With the exception of flexibility and control, however, the components were statistically unrelated, and so unsuitable for this method.

(4) Three per cent of mothers with a casual employment contract were working in an optimal quality job. For casually employed fathers the percentage was 1.9.

(5) Four per cent of mothers and 2.7 per cent of fathers with permanent job contracts worked in poor quality jobs.

Lyndall Strazdins, Megan Shipley and Dorothy H. Broom *

* National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University 

Table 1: Socio-demographic characteristics of participants (LSAC)

                                               Mothers   Fathers
                                                 (%)       (%)
                                               n=2164    n=2614

Work hours            Full-time                 25.1      93.6
                      Part-time                 74.9       6.4

Employment contract   Permanent                 50.7      64.6
                      Fixed-term                 5.2       2.4
                      Casual                    19.4       4.0

Family type           Couple parent             90.5      99.6
                      Single parent              9.5       0.4

Number of children    1                         11.8       8.3
                      2                         55.5      52.9
                      3                         24.2      27.9
                      4+                         7.5      11.0

Education             Up to year 12             27.9      23.6
                      Certificate or Diploma    33.8      43.1
                      Graduate Degree           21.3      17.2
                      Post-graduate degree      17.0      16.1

Annual household      Nil to $31,199             8.2       4.6
income (gross)        $31,200 to $51,999        18.7      21.3
                      $52,000 to $77,999        28.4      30.4
                      $78,000 to $114,399       28.0      27.3
                      $114,400 or more          16.7      16.5

Note: Employed mothers and fathers did not always come
from the same households.

Table 2: Items, score ranges and cut-points for
components of parents' job quality (LSAC)

                                                       Cut-
Components         Items                     Score    point
(no. of items)                               range     (a)

Job Control (1)    I have a lot of freedom   1-5     [greater
                   to decide how I do my             than or
                   own work                          equal to] 3

Job Security (1)   How secure do you feel    1-4     [greater
                   in your present job?              than or
                                                     equal to] 3

Flexibility (1)    If you sometimes need     1-4     [greater
                   to change the time                than or
                   when you start or                 equal to] 3
                   finish your work day,
                   is it possible?

Paid family-       Does employer provide     0-2     [greater
related leave      you with paid maternity           than or
(b,c) (2)          or parental leave?                equal to] 1

                   Does employer provide
                   you with paid personal
                   or family leave?

                               Response coding
Components
(no. of items)                1                0

Job Control (1)    Strongly agree, agree,    Disagree, strongly
                   neither agree nor         disagree
                   disagree

Job Security (1)   Very secure, secure       Not very secure,
                                             very insecure

Flexibility (1)    Yes, I am able to         No, not likely; No
                   work flexible hours;      definitely not
                   Yes, with approval in
                   special situations

Paid family-       Yes                       No
related leave
(b,c) (2)

                   Yes                       No

Notes:

(a.) Cut-point is used to allocate a score of 1
(positive job condition).

(b.) The 'don't know' response option coded to
missing for flexibility and paid leave items.

(c.) Self-employed coded as zero for all paid leave items

Table 3: Parent job quality, by full- and part-time hours (LSAC)

                      Mothers (%)                 Fathers (%)

               Part-time     Full-time     Part-time     Full-time
               n = 1620       n = 544       n = 166      n = 2448

                       With (without) job quality component

Control       81.9 (18.1)   84.0 (16.0)   84.9 (15.1)   85.3 (14.7)
Security      76.6 (23.4)   75.9 (24.1)   66.9 (33.1)   81.5 (18.5)
Flexibility   82.4 (17.6)   81.8 (18.2)   79.0 (21.0)   82.9 (17.1)
Paid family   37.6 (62.4)   66.2 (33.8)   21.7 (78.3)   58.2 (41.8)
leave
                                 JQIP categories

0-1 Poor          8.0           5.9          12.7           4.9
  quality
2                23.2          18.9          28.9          16.5
3                49.9          36.9          48.2          43.5
4 Optimal        18.9          38.2          10.2          35.0
  quality