In the year 2000, 64.2 percent of all American married-couple families with children had both parents employed.  For married-couple families with children under six years of age, 56.9 percent had both parents in the workforce.   

(Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, News, USDL O1-103, April 19, 2001, in U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001 [121st edition], Washington, DC, 2001, p. 374.)

"I am not a suffragist, nor do I believe in "careers" for women, especially a 'career' in factory and mill where most working women have their 'careers.' A great responsibility rests upon woman-the training of children. This is her most beautiful task.

(Source: Mother Jones, Autobiography of Mother Jones, 1925, in Andrews, Robert; Biggs, Mary; and Seidel, Michael, et al, The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. www.bartleby.com/66/, accessed 18 April 2002.)

"In the last 20 years the presence of women in the labor force has increased dramatically; 67% of mothers with children are employed."  With this, parents have often resorted to daycare and babysitters for the care of their children.  What of the increasing number of parents who have chosen to arrange their work schedules so that their children are always cared for by a parent, even with both parents employed fulltime?  These "tag-team parents," or dual earners with nonoverlapping shift patterns, along with their children, are the subjects of a study published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services.

An integral part of nonoverlapping employment is usually nonday shifts, which have been shown to put additional stress on families, even when only one parent is working.  For tag team parents, not only is the amount of time that spouses got to spend together diminished, as with other families with a member working non-standard work hours, but "[m]others whose spouses worked nonday shifts indicated that they felt as though their situations were similar to those of single parents."  The author further states, "Families utilizing nonoverlapping shift work often involve a parent returning from work to engage in child care and household activities alone while the other spouse either sleeps or goes off to work."

Along with the perception of "solo-parenting" and lack of family time, sleep deprivation and "slightly lower levels of marital quality [are often] associated with families engaging in nonoverlapping shift work."

Interestingly, previous studies had limned a primarily economic rationale for tag-team parenting: that the family could reduce childcare costs.  With this study, however, "the majority of mothers point to their desire to provide parental care as their main motive for utilizing nonoverlapping shift work."  Furthermore, the data also suggest that rather than viewing employment and childrearing as oppositional or mutually exclusive, with this tag-team approach, "[m]others can choose employment without choosing child care," thus, still be the "'good' mother."

In addition to decreased child care costs, and avoiding day care, increased paternal involvement is a secondary benefit of tag team arrangements.  In the end, however, parents balance the benefits of parental care-and keeping their children out of daycare, with all of the attendant harms associated with it-against the possibility that "[c]ontinuing in a nonoverlapping shift work arrangement may have negative consequences for marriages."

(Source: Angela J. Hattery, "Tag-Team Parenting: Costs and Benefits of Utilizing Nonoverlapping Shift Work in Families with Young Children," Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, Vol. 82, No. 4 [July-August 2001]: 419-427.)