Time vs. money. Spouse vs. spouse. Work vs. … well, everything.
A new report from Pew Research Center on the lives of working parents offers a statistical snapshot of the ways so-called traditional families get by – and the ways they sometimes don’t – in modern, post-recession America.
The picture isn’t all bleak; the survey found that two-parent, double-income families have more money than all others.
But the survey also shows that the effort to balance work and family life is, for many, a struggle. And it shows the stress of balancing work and family life is felt most acutely by middle-class, college-educated families.
One finding in the report confirms what people already know anecdotally: More American families than ever now include two fully employed parents.
Nearly half (46 percent) of all two-parent families with children younger than 18 have both parents working full time outside the home, versus less than a third (31 percent) of U.S. families who fit that description in 1970, according to the Pew report, titled “Raising Kids and Running a Household: How Working Parents Share the Load.”
And while about half of all parents say balancing work and family life is hard, that feeling was particularly pronounced (65 percent) among working parents with a college degree.
The survey didn’t track other employment data that might be adding to family stress. Last year, for example, a Gallup Poll found the average American salaried worker now clocks in about 47 hours a week, and many salaried workers – 18 percent – often work 60-hour weeks.
But the Pew survey did look at the stress points that often come with double-income parenting.
The finding?
Working mothers and working fathers both struggle, but in different ways.
For women, the struggle centers on time. For many full-time working moms, “feeling rushed is an almost constant reality,” and 4 in 10 working moms say they “always” feel rushed, according to the report.
“I went grocery shopping at lunch because I knew I wouldn’t have time later,” said Janie Best, a mother of two teenage sons who commutes daily from her home in Mission Viejo to her job running the nonprofit WHW (formerly known as Women Helping Women) in Santa Ana.
“Everything is in my car in cold bags, because we have no food in our refrigerator,” Best said.
The fall 2015 study of 1,807 U.S. parents with children younger than 18 did find that families are much better off financially when both parents work.
Median household income with two working parents was $102,400, compared with $84,000 when the father works full time and the mother part time, and $55,000 when the mother isn’t employed outside the home.
But for at least some local families, the double-income paycheck isn’t worth the price.
“It’s the families that really need the money that go back to work,” said Pam Martin, 57, of Huntington Beach, who quit her job to stay home when her son was born 14 years ago. “I did not want someone else to raise my child.”
The survey also found a stubborn gender divide for double-income parents – child care.
Though men and women say they increasingly split many household chores and some elements of parenting, such as discipline and activities, women told researchers they do the lion’s share of the most time-intensive elements of parenting – scheduling, homework help and staying home when a child is sick.
Some local working fathers agree with that assessment.
“My wife is spot on,” said Ryan Tamura of Rancho Santa Margarita. “We could have eight soccer games on a weekend, and she just tells me where to go.”
While mothers feel crunched for time, fathers often say work keeps them from spending time with their kids. Half of working fathers told Pew they spend “too little” time with their kids, while just 39 percent of working mothers reported feeling that way.
Attorney Dan Padova, whose wife, Christy, works full time in property management, said he has missed every one of his 15-year-old son’s lacrosse games this season.
“Tommy just told me, ‘Saturday is my last game and you’d better be there,’ so I will,” said the Seal Beach resident.
“There is just not enough time in the week to get everything done – grocery shopping, mowing the lawn, even sitting down to pay the bills,” Padova said. “Forget about down time. I get up at 5:30 every morning just so I can sit for a while drinking coffee and reading a book.”
Some fathers also see how the work and family divide falls hardest on mothers.
Josh Caudill and his wife both work full time as property managers in Huntington Beach. The couple has two toddlers, and he’s attending Cal State Long Beach two days a week.
“On the days I go to school, she comes straight home from work to take care of the kids, and I don’t get home until about 8:30,” Caudill, 30, said. “It’s crazy stressful, and she has no escape.”
He added: “I feel stressed all the time. There’s not a single day when someone doesn’t need something for work. And when you have two kids in diapers, they’ve always got to be fed and put to bed.
“It’s just super hard. I don’t get enough time with my kids. I would love to get more.”
For some, the struggle to balance work and family ends with a form of surrender, with one parent leaving the workforce.
Medical salesman Nils Johannessen, who on Thursday was working at Los Alamitos Medical Center, said his life became easier several years ago after his wife quit her job as an ER nurse and stayed home with their kids.
“When both of you are working, on-call, and you don’t know when you can leave, it creates day care issues,” Johannessen said. “It was, ‘Who can get the kids?’ and ‘When do you find time to do anything?’”
After his wife stopped working, he said, stress reduced for both parents.
“My wife made it possible for me to travel (for work).”
But for many working parents, one income isn’t an option. And, for some, the struggle to balance work and life got easier when work shifted for at least one partner.
Ben Nguyen of Huntington Beach said he and his pharmacist wife have both worked throughout their marriage, and he readily agrees that his wife does more work around the house than he does.
But he said they felt more stress when they worked separately; he was a math teacher in the Garden Grove Unified School District.
These days, they work together at the pharmacy.
“All the technology makes things more stressful, because people have access to you all the time,” Nguyen said.
“Even when you come home, you still have to answer email.”
Staff writer Susan Christian Goulding contributed to this report.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com
