Work & Family: What Your Kids Learn From Your Job

Most parents know that children learn a lot by observing the adults in their lives, but how often do you think about what your work life - your schedule, your attitude toward and your comments about your job - is teaching your children?

By Sarah Bennett-Astesano

"Work is boring because all you do is go to meetings; you never do anything fun," says 6-year-old Chloe, whose mom is the publications director for a high-tech firm.

One child's opinion may be amusing to a mom who likes her job just fine, thank you. But it raises an interesting question. What are your kids learning about the world of work from your job?

It's a relevant question for most of us. Work is a big part of American family life, since in the vast majority of families, both adults have paying jobs:

• In 61 percent of two-parent, married-couple families, both parents worked, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent numbers.

• Seventy percent of all moms with kids under age 18 work.

• The average annual family work hours increased approximately 15 percent from 1975 through the late 1990s, according to The State of Working America 2004-2005 from the Economic Policy Institute.

If work is a big part of adults' lives, it's naturally a big part of kids' lives. So what should parents know about the messages kids are getting about work - and how they're getting them?

Modeling to Young Children

Children typically learn about work in two ways: by watching their parents and by being taught about work by the adults around them. Increasingly, the teaching is less about the content of the work, and more about how to balance work and family obligations.

Parents of young children can communicate about their jobs with a few simple words (see "Introducing Children to Your Work World"), but they should also know that they're modeling attitudes about work even when they don't actively talk about it.

"This type of learning rarely means being taught directly from sermons on the value of such things as work," says George Scarlett, a child development expert at Tufts University who studies how children develop a sense of identity. Scarlett describes kids' learning at this stage as the result of daily conversations and observing - and absorbing - parents' attitudes. Parents need to be conscious of their tone when they discuss work, he says, rather than focusing only on what they say about work when intentionally "teaching" their kids.

Experts agree that very young children don't necessarily need to know details of their parents' work lives in order to learn something valuable about work.