The ‘family–work project’: children’s and parents’ experiences of working parenthood

In the United Kingdom, 83% of families have at least one parent engaged in some form of paid employment. However, the ambiguity within the moral expectations of working parenthood is experienced by some parents as a tension between competing demands for their time. Despite children being considered to be active family members, their views are often absent from research findings. This article draws on data from a qualitative, longitudinal study with 14 working families from Scotland and focuses on children’s and parents’ experiences of working parenthood over time, and how these experiences can be understood in relation to the moral narratives of parenting and constructions of childhood.