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Year Awarded: 2007
Project Leaders:
Ann Marie Ryan, Psychology; Remus Ilies, Management; Dean Manikas, Hope Middle School; Brian DeRath, Williamston Explorer Elementary School; Michael Johnson, Willow Ridge Elementary School
Project Description:
Work family conflict has been shown to have many deleterious effects on working parents (e.g., depression, work withdrawal). Yet little research has considered how school systems affect working parents and the conflict that they experience between work and family roles or how parent experiences and expectations affect school functioning. School characteristics such as scheduling, parental involvement expectations, and service provisions represent the extent to which schools have a "working parent friendly" climate. Through a collaborative effort between MSU investigators and three local schools, we plan to develop tools to understand and assess the climate of three local schools. We are interested in the extent to which these school climates are supportive of working parents, how school climate affects parental experiences of work-family conflict, and how two moderator variables (socioeconomic status and gender) relate to the effect of school climate on parent experiences. In our research, we will address four questions. First, in what ways do working parents expect the schools to help them balance work and family? Second, what are staff perceptions of parent expectations and school climate? Third, under what conditions do parents inform teachers that they are facing work demands that might interfere with child performance? And fourth, how do parent work and family demands and experiences of conflict relate to child academic and social outcomes? We believe that our research will provide a gateway to impact all area schools by identifying ways schools can be more "working-parent friendly."
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