ArticleJournal of marriage and the family2021
Work Schedule Unpredictability: Daily Occurrence and Effects on Working Parents' Well-Being.
Article in Journal of marriage and the family, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Parental Stress and Well-Being: A Meta-analysis.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2025Pooled it
- The Unseen Costs of Low-Income Work: Understanding the Relationship Between Parent Work and Child Cognitive and Academic Outcomes.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Work Schedule Quality and the Production of Parental Stress and Parenting Time.The Social service review · 2026Article
- The Double Bind of Precarious Work: Creating Need and Undermining Support.Sociological science · 2026Article
- Association between sudden work recall and psychological health issues: a cross-sectional analysis of the 6th Korean Working Conditions Survey.Annals of occupational and environmental medicine · 2025Article
- Influence of Maternal Working Hours on Children's Sleep: A Preliminary Study on Disparities Between Day and Night Shifts.Clocks & sleep · 2025Article
- Leveraging the science of early life predictability to inform policies promoting child health.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Review
- Annual Research Review: The power of predictability - patterns of signals in early life shape neurodevelopment and mental health trajectories.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Review
- Mothers' Nonstandard Work Schedules and Children's Behavior Problems: Divergent Patterns by Maternal Education.Research in social stratification and mobility · 2023Article
- Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Pandemic-Era Unemployment Insurance Access: Implications For Health And Well-Being.Health affairs (Project Hope) · 2022Article
- The Effects of the Emeryville Fair Workweek Ordinance on the Daily Lives of Low-Wage Workers and Their Families.The Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences : RSF · 2022Article
- Effect of daily school and care disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic on child behavior problems.Developmental psychology · 2022Article
- Improving health and economic security by reducing work schedule uncertainty.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Understanding patterns of food insecurity and family well-being amid the COVID-19 pandemic using daily surveys.Child development · 2021Article
- COVID-19 and Parent-Child Psychological Well-being.Pediatrics · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo investigate the pervasiveness and frequency of work schedule unpredictability among workers in low-wage hourly jobs and the effects of work schedule unpredictability on worker and family well-being.
backgroundFamily science has long considered the ways in which parents' experiences in the workplace can affect families. Although unpredictability in work schedules has increased over time, especially for low-wage workers, the effects of schedule unpredictability on worker and family well-being have been understudied.
methodNinety-two workers with children aged 2-7, recruited using a new venue-time sampling technique, were asked to complete once-a-day surveys for 30 consecutive days (
resultsWork schedule unpredictability was common in the context of families' lives: over the 30 days, parents experienced an unanticipated work schedule change on 13.3% of days, and 87% of parents experienced at least one unanticipated work schedule change. Within families, unpredictable work schedule changes on a given day were associated with worse outcomes that day for parents, including increased negative mood and decreased perceived sleep quality.
conclusionWork schedule unpredictability is ubiquitous in the lives of low-wage hourly workers and is negatively related to working parents' well-being. IMPLICATIONS: These results provide evidence that unscheduled and canceled shifts typical of low-wage service jobs may harm parents' well-being, which could ultimately affect their children's development and well-being.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.