A Routine Juggling Act: Managing Child Care and Employment

Margaret L. Usdansky, Syracuse University
Douglas A. Wolf, Syracuse University

Rising labor force participation among mothers of young children since the 1970s and the passage of strict work requirements for welfare recipients in 1996 have increased scholarly attention to the challenge of balancing the often conflicting demands of work and family. This challenge is particularly acute for mothers at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum, who are more likely to be single and to work non-standard or weekend hours than middle- or upper-class mothers. But little is known about mothers’ daily experiences managing childcare and employment. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which follows a cohort of 4,898 children born to mostly unmarried mothers in large U.S. cities, to examine how often mothers’ regular child care arrangements fall through, how often child care problems cause mothers to miss work and how often mothers report experiencing stress stemming from conflicts between child care and work.