Regularly working evenings and weekends is not good for fathers’ mental health

New research by Afshin Zilanawala (University of Southampton) and Anne McMunn (UCL) suggests that working non-standard schedules takes a toll on the health and wellbeing of parents.

Fathers who regularly worked evenings and weekends had worse mental health over time compared with fathers working standard schedules, whilst for mothers, working nights led to reductions in relationship quality.

The research used data from the Millennium Cohort Study.

Soon-to-be published work from the same project, however, shows that where both parents work non-standard schedules, fathers are more involved in parenting.