Science Daily: Working more than 20 hours a week in high school found harmful

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011) — Many teens work part-time during the school year, and in the current economic climate, more youths may take jobs to help out with family finances. But caution is advised: Among high school students, working more than 20 hours a week during the school year can lead to academic and behavior problems.

That's what researchers at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, and Temple University discovered.

In a reanalysis of longitudinal data collected in the late 1980s, researchers examined the impact of getting a job or leaving work among middle-class teens in 10th and 11th grades.

Using the full sample of about 1,800 individuals, the researchers compared adolescents who got jobs to similar teens who didn't work, and adolescents who left jobs to similar teens who kept working.

The researchers found that working for more than 20 hours a week was associated with declines in school engagement and increases in problem behavior such as stealing, carrying a weapon, and using alcohol and illegal drugs.

They also found that things didn't get better when teens who were working more than 20 hours a week cut back their hours or stopped working. Students  working 20 hours or less a week had negligible academic, psychological, or behavioral effects.

"Working part-time during the school year has been a fixture of American adolescence for more than 30 years," notes Kathryn C. Monahan, a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Washington, who led the study.

"Today, a substantial proportion of American high school students hold part-time jobs during the school year, and a large number of them work more than 20 hours each week. Kathryn C. Monahan concluded:

Although working during high school is unlikely to turn law-abiding teenagers into felons or cause students to flunk out of school, the extent of the adverse effects we found is not trivial, and even a small decline in school engagement or increase in problem behavior may be of concern to many parents.

Monahan suggested:

Parents, educators, and policymakers should monitor and constrain the number of hours adolescents work while they are enrolled in high school.

Republicans want the good ol' days when men were men and so were the boys.

Meanwhile a new GOP congressman believes US child labor laws passed in 1918 are unconstitutional. 

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a lecture posted to his YouTube channel that Congressional laws banning child labor are forbidden by the US Constitution by the 10th amendment. 

Lee thinks only the states should be able to draft child labor laws. 

The study was supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Education.

The above story was developed (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Society for Research in Child Development, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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