Advice for Working Parents

Joanne has been a single parent for eight years and a working parent for eight-and-a-half years so she knows what she's talking about when she talks about the problems and challenges of parents who work outside the home.

Joanne said many of the things working or single parents have been told about their children simply aren't true. She added that, of course, all parents work, but she's referring to parents who are paid for their work outside the home. Single parents have been led to believe that their children will have more problems in later life than children from two-parent families and that they must compensate in some way for their absence. Studies show, however, that there is no significant difference in the school performance of children from single or two-parent families.

"That makes the whole idea of compensating for not being there a little different," she said. "I think it gets back to what does it take to be a quality parent, and I think those things are the same for both."

The type of care a child receives while the parent is working is essential, according to Joanne. Most working parents indicated that they wanted their children's caretakers to be dependable, responsible and honest, to have similar moral values to their own, and to love children.

Joanne said one psychologist stresses that the person "must be absolutely crazy about your child." When selecting a caretaker for her son, Joanne said she looked for consistency in what was presented as right and proper for her child. Finally, she found a farm family near her home whose members would take care of her 11-year-old son while she works.

It's the parents' responsibility to find the right person to care for their children, she said. But Joanne, a native New Yorker, admitted that the choices may be limited in rural areas. Single parents and parents who both work outside the home must put extra forethought and organization into their child's care. They need to plan out the procedure in case of a crisis; they should be aware of books or playthings that their children can spend time with; they may arrange for kin or friends to spend time with their children.

And parents should always remember to involve their children in planning and decision-making, Joanne stressed. When she explained to her son when he was 7 years old that she would be away from home more because she had to take some college classes he readily understood. "Kids are much more understanding than we think they are," she said. According to Joanne many of the problems faced by working parents are created by the parents themselves rather than the children. Working parents tend to ascribe many more negative personal feelings to their children than the children saw in themselves.

"The key is to think and act positively", said Joanne. "If you think everything will work out just fine and you give all you got to make sure your children are properly taken care of while you are away working all you need to do next is hope for the best."

She continued, "bad things can still happen, but you deal with them after they happened". If you worry about the bad things that may never happen at all you children will sense it. And sometimes the negative feelings that you unconsciously transferred to your children can manifest. Sadly when such thing happen some parents tend to think that it was their children that at fault.