Ep. 20 - Panel 5A - Part 2 - Finding balance - Nur Nadiah Binte Zailai (MU)

NPPSH Conference

This innovative multi-method study addresses a significant gap in the literature by examining how the health and socio-economic conditions of working couple parents affect children’s development (Perry-Jenkins and MacDermid 2017). Irish parents’ experiences of constraints on time (McGinnity, Russell, Williams and Blackwell, 2005) and stress (Puff and Renk, 2014; Harold, 2016; Jabakhanji, 2016) have been reported. Where parents may no longer depend on previous models of behaviour with increasing experiences of family life as an act of balancing and co-ordinating (Beck-Gernshiem, 1998), it is imperative to discover what work-life balance means for dual-earner Irish families and its influences on both children and parents. This study will focus on how children development is connected to work, socio-economic environment, parental health, parental stress, couple relationship and parent-child relationship conditions. First, employing both 9-months-old and 9 years-old cohort datasets from the GUI study, “longitudinal methods utilizing multilevel modelling techniques and panel designs that address both change over time and dependent data among family members” (Perry Jenkins and MacDermid, 2017) from all waves (years 2008, 2011, 2013) will be conducted. Second, an online qualitative data collection platform informed by the experience sampling method (ESM) – a unique time diary method in collecting information on participants’ activities, thoughts, and emotional states as they occur in natural settings for a week (Hektner, Schmidt, and Csikszentmihalyi 2007), will be constructed to facilitate interview processes. It is hoped that upon interpretation of the two phases can mechanisms and any potential causation effects to be clearly established. Nadiah is a first year postgraduate student who is interested in the research field of children, families, work-life, mental health and socioeconomic well-being, technology use and methodologies. She has previously worked with children and families in a childcare setting.