Work-life balance helps kids

There is always a fantastic energy and optimism in Western Australia when the economy is booming and work is plentiful. Few people would dispute that we enjoy one of the best lifestyles in the world. So amid all this confidence and what would seem such a wonderful environment for families, why on earth are so many of us who work with children so worried about the future?

In our sector, the ‘children and youth’ sector, something quite alarming is happening – not just in WA, but in most developed nations – and it leads to some serious questions.

How can it be that while standards of living continue to rise to unprecedented levels, the statistics that reflect the health and wellbeing of our children are declining or static? Why is it that this new generation is likely to have a lower life expectancy than their parents?

The problems increasing in Australian children include diseases such as asthma, diabetes and obesity, mental health and behaviour problems, child abuse and neglect, physical and intellectual disabilities, risk-taking behaviours and aggressive crimes.

These are occurring at younger and younger ages; those areas which were traditionally more likely to occur in males now occur increasingly in females such as risk-taking behaviours like binge drinking and smoking, and aggressive assaults. 

While some of these increases may be that we count things better and label things differently, all services for children and young people are stretched as they have never been before, and prevention has been forgotten as the prerogative to help and treat today’s problems dominate the services.

It’s what’s being dubbed ‘modernity’s paradox’ and the implications for all of us are profound – whether we have children or not. 

As a well respected leader in the business community said to me: “Each of us should have a strong interest in the health of other people’s children, not just our own, because it is they who will make up our society, our customer base, our workforce, and our context in the years to come.

“Some, but only some, satisfaction can come from saying my responsibility ends with making sure that my own children are not in this ‘at risk’ group.”

So if those of us who are involved in child health and wellbeing are struggling to turn around these worrying statistics, what can business do?

Well, the exciting thing is that we do know that making the workplace easier for parents will help enormously to improve child health, development and well being, and hence ensure Australia’s future.

Our (and other international) research is showing a powerful and direct relationship between how our workplaces function and how well children develop. 

For example, those countries with workplace policies that acknowledge and support families and parents have much better outcomes for children and youth and fewer social inequalities than countries that don’t – Scandinavia and Holland versus Canada and Australia.

The workplace situations which reduce (or increase) the resources for child development, health and wellbeing include income and time. In terms of income, there have been winners and losers in the new economy and Australia has become a less equal society over the past 30 years.

The gap between the high and low paid has increased markedly, particularly for men.

The best job for a father is a secure position in the workforce with adequate pay to house, clothe, feed and educate his children, and with enough hours to be a parent.

The proportion of women aged between 25 and 44 years (the child-bearing years) who have a partner and a full-time job has not changed much since 1978. The proportions of men in these age groups who have both a partner and a full-time job have fallen dramatically.

The second element is time. The workplace now seems to consist of the overworked and the underworked, with the amount of time that is optimal for a good family life decreasing.

The best outcome in terms of time for children is a secure 37-hours-a-week job with adequate income and time to be a parent. There have been no increases in these jobs over the last 20 years.

The most dramatic increases in jobs in Australia have been in those which are least compatible with being a parent, which may help to explain both work stress and the falling birth rate, as well as the negative effects on children’s brain development.

The largest increase has been in one to 15 hours per week, in insecure, casual and contingent work.

While this may suit many mothers, it does not suit the majority of men, who are fathers or want to be. A big increase has occurred in jobs working 50 to 60 hours per week and not all these are in the professions; many are in essential trades, mining and industry.

All the extra full-time men’s jobs created over the past 25 years have required them to work 45 hours a week or more.

Thus, the workplace has become much less child friendly. And children do mind.

So the challenge for business is enormous. How can you balance the seemingly conflicting needs to be more supportive of your workers as parents and community workers as well as to be competitive in today’s harsh global business world? Is it realistic to change the way we manage businesses today to allow for economic prosperity tomorrow? What we’re talking about is an investment  – in your future workforce, future consumers, future society.

So am I saying that all children are struggling? Of course not. We all know and can see a large proportion of children who will develop into wonderful adults and will contribute to our society in a significant way. However, they too will shoulder the economic and social burden of the increasing numbers in their generation who are marginalised and unable to take a productive role in our society – as we’ve recently seen in the violence in Sydney and France.

We’re currently faced with a skills shortage – surely we need to have va iew to the longer term and ensure that today’s children are raised in environments that will enable them to be contributing members of our community – and that means, protecting family life. Let’s focus some of the benefits that come in boom times, to invest in our state’s most important resource, our children.

• Professor Fiona Stanley, director, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.