Abstract
BackgroundMore than half of adolescents have jobs in summer or sometime during the year. While employers are ultimately responsible for their safety, parents are often important in helping their children navigate the work environment. Our study examines the attitudes, beliefs and types of involvement parents have in their children’s work.MethodsWe modeled a telephone survey of 507 English-speaking parents of working adolescents in Ontario, Canada on a US study and examined their perspectives, comparing to earlier findings from the U.S. parents.ResultsMost Ontario parents helped their teens consider questions to ask about work, for example, work hours (90.7%) and job tasks (78.2%) and fewer about workplace safety (57.9%). Parents overall were concerned about their teens, especially younger teens, getting behind on schoolwork (69.3%), being rushed on the job (60.1%) and doing hazardous tasks (58.3%) or working alone (51.9%), or being at work during a robbery (74.5%). Parents of 14–17-year-old daughters were more concerned about their child being assaulted than were parents of sons (62.4% vs. 51.4%), particularly if the teen was in the 18–19 age group (74.3% vs. 52.5%). Half the parents indicated 10–19 h per week was the right amount of work time for their teen, and most agreed that laws should limit the number of hours of youth work.ConclusionsOverall, Ontario parents appear to be more concerned about the safety and also more involved in the work of their adolescent children than U.S. parents previously surveyed. Parents are engaged with their children about their work and may serve as valuable assets to helping to advocate for safe work policies and environments.
Highlights
More than half of adolescents have jobs in summer or sometime during the year
Though legally the responsibility for a safe workplace falls to employers, parents are a potential source of help to young workers navigating the work environment
A national survey of parents of U.S working teens, [7] observed that American parents, generally aware of the presence of child labor laws, were illinformed about specific labor and safety restrictions, with fewer than 15% correctly answering questions about hour restrictions, fewer than a quarter being aware of restrictions on motor vehicle use by teens under age 18, and only about half knowing about restrictions on the use of forklifts or power slicers
Summary
More than half of adolescents have jobs in summer or sometime during the year. While employers are responsible for their safety, parents are often important in helping their children navigate the work environment. According to the Statistics Canada Labor Force Survey Estimates [1], approximately 983,000 young people aged 15–24 years old living in the province of Ontario were employed between June and October 2019. This compares to 972,000 Ontario youth (ages 15–24) working in 2008 between June and October 2008 [1] when we collected the data reported here, or 56% of youth in that age range [2], slightly less than the proportions working in the US (62%) at the time of our US analysis [3] While there currently are proportionally more full-time workers. Parents in the US expressed concern about a number of the job duties their children were performing, yet overall were favorable to their adolescents working [9]
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