For Paula Hadnot, the move into a Riverdale shelter with five of her six children was just one more marker in a slow, 17-month slide that began when she lost her job.
“It never crossed my mind that I’d be out of work this long,” said the 43-year-old, previously an aide to developmentally disabled adults. “I thought I’d have another job the next month.”
Now, the single mother worries about a lot more than just finding a way to replace her $10-an-hour position. Her 16-year-old recently ran away for two days before Hadnot could find him. Her 11-year-old refuses to eat at the shelter, she said.
The Census Bureau made headlines last week with the news that 2.6 million Americans had slipped into poverty in the last year, bringing the total to 46.2 million, the most since the agency started tracking such data more than a half-century ago.
But those sobering statistics did little to illuminate the lingering impact on kids, who account for 16.4 million — or more than 1 in 5 — of the nation’s poor. But new research shows that in ways large and small, from more tantrums to postponing education, the recession — and job loss in particular — could have implications on them for decades to come.
“There is growing evidence that parental job loss has adverse consequences on children’s behavior, academic achievement and later employment outcomes,” said Heather Hill, assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.
In a new study, Hill has found that youngsters — mostly 8- to 10-year-olds from low-income households — have 40 percent more behavior problems in the classroom if Mom is out of the labor force for a prolonged period.
It’s no surprise that financial hardship hurts school performance. Poor nutrition, a lack of health insurance, haphazard child care instead of preschool, frequent moving and absenteeism all contribute to the erosion of children’s well-being, say advocates such as the Children’s Defense Fund, which called the Census Bureau numbers “a national disgrace.”
But you don’t have to be at the bottom of the economic ladder to be hit hard.
In a separate study, Hill’s colleague Ariel Kalil analyzed the impact of job loss on the offspring of a pool that included middle-class and high earners and discovered that they, too, had trouble — depending on which parent got laid off.
If Dad was axed, children were 1.6 times more likely to repeat a grade. Among older kids, paternal unemployment resulted in more suspensions.
The difference has less to do with less money than with gender roles and the marital relationship, explained Kalil, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies.
“For men, so much of their identity is tied to being the breadwinner … and if their wives had an expectation that this was the role their husbands were going to fill, it can be quite stressful,” she said. “Some dads are so defined by their jobs that they don’t tell their kids at all. They say they’re going to work when they’re really going to outplacement.”
Even when Mom is the bigger earner, said Kalil, the repercussions are not the same if she loses her job as when Dad is out of work. “She may channel her time windfall into family life, but he may not be as able to seamlessly take over that role. … It’s really about stress.”
On average, the students repeating a grade were about 9 years old and were followed for two years. The average age of kids getting suspended or expelled was about 13 or 14, Kalil said.
Both researchers point out that their findings are based on analysis of the recession of the early 1990s, but that they have “good reason” to conclude that the same negative outcomes will be replicated in the current recession.
In fact, the impact could be even greater, given the length of the current downturn and that it has reached into sectors not usually affected, Hill added.
Hadnot doesn’t need academics to make the link. The longer her unemployment grinds on, the more she sees her kids acting out.
For James, 16, the move to the shelter has been embarrassing, she explained. “He just doesn’t want to be here.”
As for her 11-year-old son, Jalen, “he’s a lot more withdrawn. He won’t socialize with anyone,” said Hadnot, who spends her days boosting her job prospects through the Cara Program, a life skills and workforce development initiative.
While she has always lived paycheck to paycheck, the family could at least eat pizza and watch TV together in their South Shore apartment. But in the shelter, there is no privacy. “It’s really hard … especially on teens,” she said.
It’s not much easier on younger kids, said Maria Silva, a single parent who was laid off from a cleaning company last April. While Silva looks for work, her 5-year-old son, Israel, attends a Head Start program on the Southwest Side run by Metropolitan Family Services, but is too young to grasp their dire straits.
“He keeps asking for stuff … for toys, for shoes, for snacks. We can’t afford any of it,” Silva said. “I try to explain it, but he doesn’t understand. So he just cries … and that didn’t happen before.”
In the suburbs, where economic woes are often less visible, Bobbie Hinden has also noted the distress. She runs Family Focus’ after-school activity program at two Highland Park elementary schools, where she has close-up views of fraying families.
In the last five years, she has observed an uptick in frustration from the kids, along with more difficulty paying attention, she said. There has been a “huge increase” in scholarship applications — although not everyone is eager to sign up.
She cited one 9-year-old boy, who had attended since kindergarten and had shown significant gains from the after-school enrichment, who recently dropped out after Dad lost his job.
“Fathers would rather pull their kids than ask for help,” Hinden said.
It’s not all negative, said Chris Campbell, head of the Executive Network Group of Greater Chicago, an employment support group for those who formerly earned six-figure salaries or more. “What I hear more often is how kids love that Dad isn’t working.”
It takes the typical ENG member 18 months to land a new position. Because most were professionals in demanding jobs that required travel and late nights, many dads are available for the first time to participate in school activities or attend sports. “When they do go back, their concept of work/life balance is different,” Campbell said.
But it would be a mistake to paint the current declines as anything but painful, experts said.
“Unemployment is the domino,” said Catherine Beane, of the Children’s Defense Fund. “And the rest of the dominoes will continue to tumble throughout their lives.”
