Child's well-being and parents' employment status in Nigeria

Abstract

The sustainable development goals have been shown to be interdependent. Infants and children are important target groups for enhancing the future prospects of any society through improved welfare. It is noted that child's development within the home could be hampered when the family is poor and devoid of decent employment, so employed parents' income is an important mean to secure the child's well-being. However, the effects of parents' work on the child have been found to be ambiguous. The current study examined the relationship between the child's well-being and parents' employment status in Nigeria with the use of multiple regression technique. The results suggest that employment of each of the parents dampened the child's health, while the earnings from their wages and salary enhanced the child's well-being. To address the parents' work and childcare conflicts and maximise the benefits of the parents' earning, government should generate better quality jobs, proffer family-friendly policies which are adequate and capable of helping women to achieve work-family balance, and also encourage both public and private employers of labour to do so.