2011 Articles

Work and Family: Introducing the Issue

Waldfogel, Jane; McLanahan, Sara

This issue of The Future of Children describes the challenges parents face in taking care of family responsibilities while also holding down a job and explores the implications of those challenges for child and family wellbeing. As children grow and develop, parents are the hub in a system of care to meet their needs, a system that includes extended family, preschools, schools, health care providers, community organizations, and others, but in which parents play the lead role. Often these same working parents have additional care responsibilities for other family members—in particular, the elderly—and are, for them too, the hub around which other caregivers, services, and programs revolve.