Thursday 26 November 2009

Recession-hit couples turn to 'shift-parenting' to stay afloat

More parents are taking second jobs and turning to 'shift parenting' (where one parent works in the day and the other at night to avoid childcare costs), according to a new study into how the recession is changing family life. The study, from charity 4Children, involved 1,000 families. Julia Margo of the thinktank Demos said middle-class parents were being particularly hard-hit by the economic freeze, and that shift-parenting – long a feature of working-class family life – was now common in middle-class homes, too.