LECTURE SERIES: Trade-offs: Australian adolescent mental health and parents’ time and money pressures
Parents make difficult choices between earning income and time with their family, and while the detrimental consequences for adolescent’s mental health from financial hardships is well known, is there a comparable impact from time pressures? Using longitudinal data from Australian households (HILDA, 11,128 observations) we consider couple and lone parent households where parents have a job. In these families, financial pressures are generally lower than in jobless families, but the time costs can be high, and we model outcomes for adolescent’s (aged 15-18) self-reported mental health.
Mothers (couple and lone) tend to give more time to care and less to paid work, relative to (couple and lone) fathers who show an oppositive pattern. As well as earning less income, mothers in both family types also reported greater time pressure. For adolescents living in couple-parent families (the most financially secure), we find that financial hardship and their mother’s time pressures were equally important, exerting comparably negative influences on adolescent mental health. Among adolescents living in lone mother families (the poorest in our sample), financial hardship had the strongest influence. In contrast, in lone father families, where incomes were mid-way between lone mother and couple-parent families, father’s time pressure (but not family financial hardship) exerted a harmful influence on adolescent mental health.
Our findings build on recent research showing that the quality of relationships can change under time pressure. Priorities shift to getting things done, while awareness of, and responses to, other’s needs and viewpoints are reduced. Time and money are both fundamental resources for families, and in many households the pressures on both these resources are acute. Our study indicates they exert similar, negative influences on adolescent mental health, and both are an important target for preventative interventions.
Professor Strazdins is a research leader in work and health in contemporary, gender-mixed labour markets. Her research focuses on the harmful consequences for family health and wellbeing and for gender equality of conflicts between work and family care. Research evidence emanating from her research therefore advocates the need to address long work hours as a Work Health and Safety problem as well as a gender equity priority – she has termed this convergence between long work hours, health and inequality the Hour Glass ceiling. She is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and was awarded the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Fellowship Seal of Excellence (2017). She has published widely in interdisciplinary health journals such as Social Science and Medicine, and her publications have twice been ranked among the top in their year (2007, 2016) in her field. Professor Strazdins also leads research on time as a social determinant of health, because lack of time (quantity and quality) is one of the most important reasons why people do not exercise regularly, or eat healthy food or seek preventive care. She has been a scientific advisor to the Australian Government Investing in Women, seeking to support gender equality in employment in Asian labor markets and to the Australian Defense Forces on mental health and families. She has presented to the Japanese Gender Equality Bureau and served as Scientific Advisor for multiple Federal and State Government initiatives in Australia, including Health Promotion and Work Health and Safety. She was the Director of the Research School of Population Health at the Australian National University (ANU) and led the ANU Mental health and wellbeing strategy. Professor Strazdins has worked closely with Professor Jianghong Li at the WZB for over a decade, publishing The unequal hour: How time is shaping health in 2024.
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