2: Tuesday Media Release – National Family Week
Weekend Workers: Part-time Parents?
It‘s time to address a growing social problem in the UK today
The Problem: Children spend less and less time with their parents because the parents increasingly have to work at weekends. Sadly this is the case for more and more families in our 24/7 society. The UK is top of the table for evening and weekend work, but bottom of the table for child wellbeing. We have a problem – a growing problem.
Madeleine Bunting has warned about the way a 24/7 society erodes family life. ‘A future beckons of a 24/7 society in which we stretch childcare to cover round-the-clock flexibility, from breakfast clubs to after school clubs. At what point does the flexibility which employers want snap the fragile threads of interdependence on which human life is based? How is it that we have so little time – the most basic requirement of human engagement – to give each other?’
- Over one million families have at least one parent working on both weekend days, meaning the working parent has little time to spend with their children.
- Over a quarter of lone parents work at weekends.
- Significantly more employers in the UK regularly require their employees to work at weekends than anywhere else in Europe.
- Three quarters of mothers working at weekends say that weekend work is a job requirement, rather than a choice, and the vast majority would prefer not to do so.
- Dads who work unsocial hours spend approximately ten and a half hours less with their children over a whole week.
- The average couple mum who works unsocial hours spends approximately 8 hours less with her children over a week and is particularly likely to miss out on weekends.
- Sadly, most parents who work at weekends don’t make up for the lost time on another day meaning their kids miss out.
The Solution: As part of our entry to the ‘social innovation competition’ for National Family Week, Keep Time for Children are promoting a Family Day Bill. Children need to spend time with their parents if they are to grow up as happy and well-rounded individuals.
- The Family Day Bill would give every parent of school-age children a weekend day off – the very time when children are not at school and need parenting.
- The Family Day Bill would extend existing flexible working legislation, addressing the increasing prevalence of ‘shift-parenting’ and of young children being left ‘home alone’.
- Employers would have to facilitate parents taking the same day off because the couple relationship is important in itself and vital for child development.
- Families are key to our society. They are crucial for raising the next generation and teaching them social skills, as a well as providing emotional, physical, financial and spiritual care.
Michael Trend, the Executive Director of the Keep Time For Children campaign comments: ‘National Family Week is an amazing idea, but we need more than one week a year – parents need help every week. Flexible working legislation has really helped families but many parents do not have a real choice to spend weekend time with their children. The UK has a serious problem – unsocial working hours are playing havoc with parenting and family life. The Family Day Bill gives parents the choice to be responsible – it gives many families a chance.’
NOTE TO EDITORS: Keep Time for Children is a campaign run by the Relationships Foundation. The Foundation, established in 1993, is a Cambridge-based independent think tank seeking a better connected society. It studies the effect that culture, business and government have on relationships. It proposes new ideas for strengthening social connections, campaigns on issues where relationships are being undermined, and trains and equips people to think relationally for themselves. Previous publications are available on our website.
For more information see www.keeptimeforchildren.org.uk
Notes:
Madeleine Bunting, Willing Slaves: How the Over work Culture is Ruling our Lives (Harper Collins, 2004).
All the research referred to above can be found in: