Parental employment quality during childhood and mental health in adolescence: a 10-year longitudinal study

Socioeconomic conditions play an important role in shaping the mental health outcomes of children and youth. Socioeconomic disadvantage in early life is often a product of precarious parental employment. Although more and more parents are participating in the workforce, a growing share of working parents rely on jobs that are insecure, unstable, and low paying. Against the backdrop of these trends, we examined the relationship between parental employment quality during childhood and mental health in adolescence among dual-parent families in Canada. Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (n = 3955). We used latent class analysis to construct longitudinal and multidimensional profiles of maternal and paternal employment quality across early (ages 4–5), middle (ages 8–9), and late (ages 12–13) childhood. We then quantified associations between childhood profiles of parental employment quality and emotional and behavioural difficulties in adolescence (ages 14–15). Latent class analysis identified three types of household employment arrangements: ‘High Quality’, ‘Primary Earner’, and ‘Precarious’. After adjusting for baseline child, parent, and household characteristics, parental employment quality during childhood was a significant predictor of emotional (but not behavioural) difficulties. Relative to their counterparts in the ‘High Quality’ group, adolescents exposed to ‘Primary Earner’ and ‘Precarious’ parental employment were nearly twice as likely to report serious emotional difficulties. We conclude that low-quality (e.g., precarious) parental employment contributes to the mental health challenges that young people face, reinforcing the importance of stable and rewarding jobs for fostering the emotional well-being of children and youth.