The present study focused on employed parents with preschool children attending a licensed daycare centre. There were two purposes to this study: (1) to compare parental functioning in users of on-site and off-site daycare, and (2) to examine the relationship between child care variables and parental functioning. Sixty six employed parents with preschool children completed the study (48 mothers and 18 fathers). Parents were recruited from nine workplace daycare centres that serviced employees first (on-site group), and then community members (off-site groups). Measures assessing work attitudes, individual, family, and work-family functioning, child care variables, and demographic data were obtained twice over a span of six months. Parents in the on-site group also took part in a semi-structured interview at both assessment times. Results of multivariate analyses on the questionnaire data yielded no significant differences between users of on-site daycare and users of off-site daycare on any of the dependent variables at either assessment time and no group by time interaction. Content analyses of the interview data indicated that parents believe that on-site daycare helps them balance work and family responsibilities. According to parents, on-site daycare is convenient, it allows them to spend more time with their children, it reduces their travel time and work disruptions, increases their availability at work, and improve their work environment. However, data from these interviews also suggested that the quality of child care may be more important in helping parents balance work and family responsibilities than is the location of the centre. Multiple regression analyses on the questionnaire data further underlined the importance of child care in relation to parental functioning. The results indicated that having primary responsibility for child care and the experience of difficulties with child care was related to perceived stress and role overload. High levels of work-child care conflict were negatively related to parental satisfaction, and satisfaction with child care arrangement was positively related to parental satisfaction. Taken together, these findings underscore the importance of considering child care in the context of balancing work and family responsibilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/9735 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Picard-Lessard, Michelle. |
| Contributors | Lee, Catherine, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 250 p. |
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