Consequences of nonstandard work for parent and child wellbeing: A cross-country study (NONWELL)

The emergence of service economies and the ongoing technological and digital revolution have changed the way we work. In particular, nonstandard work schedules (e.g. work in the evenings, nights, weekends, or with precarious schedules) have become increasingly prevalent in recent decades. This trend and change have dramatically challenged family processes and interactions. Nonstandard work schedules (NSWS) can compromise parents’ mental health and increase conflicts with family time, thus affecting fathers’ and mothers’ parenting capacities as well as parent-child relationships. These implications of NSWS can, in turn, negatively affect the wellbeing of children whose parents work NSWS.

There is limited evidence to date on how NSWS negatively affects family wellbeing. The proposed project will examine the impact of the impact of NSWS on the psychological wellbeing of children and parents using European cross-country data and large-scale longitudinal data from Germany, Australia, UK, and the US. A central aim of this project is to understand the moderating and mediating factors in the association between NSWS and child and parental wellbeing, and whether these relationships vary across countries with different family policies and working time regimes.

The project will advance our knowledge by:

1. Examining the consequences of NSWS for parents’ mental health and psychological wellbeing.

2. Identifying the potential effects of NSWS on child wellbeing and factors that moderate and mediate these effects.

3. Analyzing differences in the associations between NSWS and child wellbeing across Germany, Australia, the U.K., and the US