Influence of Parental Work Status on the well being of Children: a Cross Cultural Study

Studies on children and adolescents have been of great interest for psychologists for years. Research has been going on for long, on parent-child relationship and how various child rearing practices affect the growth and over all development of children. Nevertheless, child-rearing is a stressful experience especially in modern society with its fragmented values, dual parental employment, divorce and loss of extended family support. But no matter what, a good parent child relationship is essential for raising children with self-esteem&confidence and a sense of well being. The present study tries to find out the difference in well being of children with both working parents and single working parents across two different cultures. It was conducted on 120 boys -60 from Kerala and 60 from Delhi, belonging to upper middle class families and aged between 11years to 14 years. Children were asked to complete a PGI Well Being Scale. It was a cross sectional study and appropriate statistical analysis was carried out. Findings indicate that there was profound effect of cultural values on well being of children whereas the parental work status influenced the children's well being only in Kerala and not in Delhi.