Low Income Working Families: Parents’ Employment, Education, and Child Care Quality

This chapter explores parent employment and education outcomes in the 307 families who participated in the study. Each family was asked to report employment/education patterns for a female and male head of household; 116 male heads of households and 307 female heads of household were identifi ed. Relationships between child quality variables (discussed in Chapter 4) and parent employment/education outcomes were examined. The combined relationships of a number of child care quality variables (discussed in Chapter 4) with parent employment/education were examined using correlation and regression analyses (see Appendix G for statistics). The effects of child’s age in months, child care setting, and community residence were also included in these analyses. Parent outcomes included in this research were hours per week spent in paid employment or in a school or training program, work hours per day (full-time, parttime, temporary), work shift (day, evening, night, shift change), number of months working for employer, interruption in work due to illnesses or child care problems, and raises or promotions at work.