I'm a working mom and I'm a really hands-on mom. In fact,
so hands-on that i even homeschooled all of my children.
But people always want to know: What effects do working parents have on
family life? And how do you keep the balance how
it needs to be when you're working and when you're trying to be the very
best parent you can be? Well, I'm Nicholeen peck and i'm the
owner of teachingselfgovernment.com. I've written lots of books on parenting.
I've even starred in a BBC episode of the World's Strictest Parents.
And I'm going to talk to you today about how working parents impact
family life.
So, what effects do working parents have on
family life? I want to share with you my story
and how i've been able to balance work and home and get the positive effects
while minimizing the negative effects. That's
right. There are negative effects and we need to be aware of those.
But there are also positive effects that you can get to if you manage that
culture with work and family in a really balanced way.
So, let me tell you a little bit about me. I
never saw myself as a career woman. In fact, try as I might, I have tried to
leave careers I don't know how many times. Yet for some
reason they just keep coming out and finding me. So, when i first got married, I
was a career person. In fact, I think I made more money than
my husband at the time. In fact, I'm quite sure I did. I've almost
always had that potential but haven't always wanted to take it.
Anyway, so then first baby's coming along.
And I really wanted to have those cherished years with that baby
and just be home with him. Yet, my work still wanted me. They kept asking
me to come back into the office for this or that or the other. So, I wasn't able to
make that full break. Well, I maintained this kind of hybrid
life where maybe 2 afternoons a week i would go
into the office and the rest of the time I would stay with my little guy. And then
before I know it here comes baby number 2.
By the time i was pregnant with baby number 2, I thought "This is
it. I've got to be done with this office life.
I need to have time just with my children
because they're growing too fast." And i'm one of those people that does not like
to miss a really good opportunity. And I saw the
raising of those children as my prime opportunity at the time. So, I dedicated
my heart to being with my children. Now,
that's an important part of the balance that a working parent has to have. Your
heart has to be all in with the family. You've
got to keep your priorities in the right place
so that your heart is always ready to bond and connect with the children
when you're at home or with your spouse when you're at home. Honestly, if you're
putting work above your spouse, that's a dangerous thing as well. So, I
told myself "This is where my heart is and I'm pulling away." Well, no sooner did
I pull away then my husband changed careers and I
ended up doing foster care and bringing troubled teens into my home. Well, even
though I was home all day, I was still working like crazy doing treatment for
these children. And part of that work meant going to court regularly,
meeting with caseworkers, meeting with families,
developing treatment plans, all that kind of stuff for these youth. So,
i was busy working with them even though i got to stay
with my babies most of the time which was one of my goals
at that point of my life. Then as time went by, not too much time,
people started asking me if i would speak at places. "Will you come speak at
our school or our PTA group? Will you talk to our parent
support group or our church group about being a good parent?" And I thought,
"This is probably going to be short-lived." But it wasn't short-lived. In fact, in
2009 when the BBC made a documentary of our family called
The World's Strictest Parents it just launched it into high gear. I had
no idea that I was going to end up being a
world figure that people would look to for parenting
all over the world because of this BBC program. Well, people started begging for
books. So, I decided i'd start writing books.
Well, in no time there were 11 books. There were
courses, there were speaking engagements
everywhere all over the world. And then as a few more years passed by, I
was asked to speak at really high profile places like the United Nations
and the World Congress and with different legislators, lawmakers,
religious leaders. People who wanted help with their
training of parents of how to be good parents. And then I was asked to be
president of an organization, an international non-profit organization
called the worldwide organization for women
that consults at the united nations on issues related to family,
women, children. And that was just this other thing that I never planned on
doing. Now, normally I would have said no
because I like to keep my priorities straight and i did say no at first.
In fact, I said no to the BBC show, i said no to the worldwide organization for
women. I've said no to a lot of things. And then
I start really thinking about it and my heart tells me, "No, this
is something you're supposed to do." So, I decided to take it on. So, then here I am
at this point homeschooling my children. No longer doing foster care at the time.
So, by the time I became the president of the Wow organization,
I wasn't doing foster care. But here i'm still homeschooling my 4 children
that are my own and i'm running teaching self-government
and i'm running the Wow organization and i'm speaking all over the world.
But what's my top priority? My top priority always is those children,
that family, my husband. And so, I had to make a plan for myself
so that I could keep that priority in place
and so that I could have my family only have positive effects
for me being this working mother and not the negative ones.
Now, I'm going to tell you what I did, my formula and what the negatives and
positives are that we need to be aware of and work
toward. Alright. So, here's a list of some of the
negative effects that can result from parents working.
Number 1, your children can be more entitled. I've seen this happen with
many families because the parents are gone a lot and
so the child feels like they can do whatever they
want whenever they want and they get this
feeling of being deserving. Sometimes the parents are just showering the child
with special attention whenever they are with
them because they're not with them so often. This is a danger that we need
to be aware of. The second thing is quantity of time.
So, you have to make sure that you still have the largest quantity of time
with the family. That's hard isn't it when a work day
lasts so long. But that means you have to budget your time
really well and make your moments count. So, people have said for many years
starting with the feminist movement of the 1970s, someone coined the
phrase that it's a quality of time and not quantity of time that matters.
and that is a total lie. Now, are there quality moments that
we love and always remember? Yes. But those quality moments usually
happen in the middle of a quantity of time.
Those real quality moments are hard to fabricate
and no amount of money makes quality. The quality comes when there's this
heart-to-heart connection that happens with the parents, when
there's this transformational conversation that helps a child really
see the light about a certain topic or understand the
parent just a little bit more. And those conversations only happen when
the relationship is very stout and strong. And stout-strong
relationships take time to make. Whoever has the most
time with your child is the one who has the most
influence. So, as a working parent, we've got to remember that.
Because there's things we have to do, there's projects that we have to work on
but we cannot, we must not allow all of our time to be taken up by
those things and then hope one little bedtime story
is going to fill all the needs for the children. Anyone who teaches you
that the child only needs 7 minutes of your time a day or some ridiculous
statistic like that has truthfully probably never
raised children or they're just trying to make themselves feel better.
Your children need you. They need the security of being with you,
they need that quantity of time. So, one of the negative effects then is that
you're not there so they don't get the quantity of time
from you, they go searching for it somewhere else.
Oftentimes media, screens, friends, other things.
Another negative effect that your child can experience
and that even you can experience when you have working parents in the home
is a loss of priorities. Sometimes our stress and our overwhelm
related to projects that we have to work on for our work
can make it so that our priorities get completely out of whack.
And as soon as our priorities are not fully felt,
our children know it and they start misbehaving.
They start feeling like they're not important. They may not be able to put
their finger on it but they just feel the detachment and
when they're detached they misbehave. So, another negative
effect is increased stress. Increased overwhelm.
Because you're taking on more and you know it.
So, it's naive for us to think that we can have a job and do all this work
related to the job and that everything's going to be smooth
sailing with the family and there's not going to ever be any
stress. There is going to be stress. You know you
so make sure that you evaluate if that stress is really worth it for those
family relationships that are your top priority.
Because another negative effect that can occur from working parents
is disconnection. The people that can feel detached from each other.
There's not as much communication, not as much bonding that happens
and so everybody starts feeling just a little bit separated.
Even if you happen to be around the dinner table every night.
Another negative is people get distracted.
When you're not there, the children get distracted on what really matters.
They get distracted by just the next fun or exciting thing that comes along.
And they start connecting with anything and everything around them. This
means social media, games, any friend in the neighborhood
that wants to give them the time of day. If they don't have somebody who's always
there for them, then they start being not very picky about how
they spend their time and distraction takes over.
So, what are the positive effects? That seems like a pretty big
list of the negative effects that we need to be careful of. Well, the positive
effects have a pretty big list too. So, interestingly, one of the positive
effects that our children learn is priorities.
Remember how one of the negatives was that there might be a lack of priorities
or a detachment from priorities? Well, if you run things well always
putting family first connecting and bonding to your children,
making sure that your heart is turned toward them, then they will also learn
priorities. They'll see what is first to you. They
will know. I remember one day... (Get a little
emotional here) I remember one day after a very
busy time I had traveled, I had been gone for like a whole weekend, I came home.
I wasn't feeling very well. I was just getting kind of run down
and I came home and I sat down and my youngest son
came up to me and he put his arm around me and he says, "Oh, mom.
I know that this is your happiest place and that you're sad that you've had to
be away from us for this long." My heart was instantly healed. Yes, I
was tired. I was overwhelmed from all the things
that I had still to do now that i just got home but he knew
where my happy place was. Mission accomplished. My culture and my
family had put family first in his eyes no matter where
I was or who I had to serve. Family was the top priority. When parents
work, hopefully they're doing it for a reason
that's more important than money. Usually we feel compelled to do certain
things. Like me teaching parenting and running
the organization that i do that helps families. I feel compelled to
do those things because I know I have the skill sets
necessary to help people. It's a mission that I
have. It's something that is i feel like my
purpose in life. And when I explain to my
children, "This is part of my purpose, this is
something i have to give back." Then they understand what purpose is. And
they understand that they should be finding things in their lives
that are part of their life's purpose too. It gives them direction.
It gives them something greater than themselves and their own comforts
to care about because they see my example
of living in that way. One of my greatest purposes or missions, the greatest of all
my missions which prepares me to even do anything else is that mission
of parent. Do you realize that to be a parent is to
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, comfort
the lonely, teach the ignorant, liberate the captive,
create beauty, preach the gospel? Do you realize that
all those things are part of the mission called
being a parent? It is the mission of all missions. The purpose
of all purposes. So, if we live that with our full heart,
then we'll know when it's time for us to go and do something else and our
children will understand when we have to give to other people in
a mission or purpose kind of a way. Another positive effect is your children
get to learn how to do business. When they are first
in your lives, then probably what you're going to do is
involve them a little bit more in what you're doing with your work and
with your business. I know so many people who are involved in a
certain business and then their children end up part of
that industry too. Hmm, go figure. Well, that's because they
brought their children in to what they were
doing instead of making their children wait until they were done. If we're wise,
we teach our children how to do the work we're doing.
We give them adult skills, we give them experience.
And that type of experience will end up being more transformational for their
lives than anything they learn at school about
how to get a job. Another effect of working
and parenting all at the same time is your children get to feel how much
you care. So, when your priorities are in the right
place, they know you care about them when. They
see you serving others and then breaking away because they're your top
focus, they know you care. That feeling of
caring permeates your whole home. They start
serving you, making your life easier too. This balance
between home life and work life doesn't have to
feel like a balance. It can instead be something that's just
built with layers. Instead of on a seesaw that goes back
and forth. Sure there's moments when you work where life feels a little
unbalanced and it has to be for a minute. Every time I've written a book, my life's
gone out of balance just a teeny bit. But because I had the foundation in
place which was the foundation of the family
relationships, how we would communicate, how we would
solve problems, how we would show love to each other; all
of those things were solid and firm. Then all of the other
things with business that were built on the top
just succeeded. They weren't difficult, they weren't the things that were making
it so that i couldn't appreciate family life anymore which happens to so
many people. This video really gets to the heart of the matter. Your
heart, your children's heart. But we also need
to know how our behaviors when we're doing that parenting thing
really impact the success of our children.
If you like this video, i know you will love my next video called
How Do Parenting Styles Significantly Impact
A Child's Temperament? Because they do. And if you understand those truths,
you're going to be even more effective as you're trying to balance out work
and family.