Parents' Commute to Work and Children's Social and Emotional Wellbeing in Germany

Based on a nationally representative sample from the German Socioeconomic Panel Data (SOEP), we examined the relationship between parents’ commute to work and five domains of child emotional and behavioral problems, using SDQ and controlling for family socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and child gender. The findings show that commute to work by both fathers and mothers when their children aged 3 to 4 years was associated with a higher level of emotional and behavioral problems in their children two years later.  In both-parent families, father’s daily commute to work two years prior was associated with higher scores for peer problems and, to a lesser extent, higher scores for emotional symptoms and hyperactivity when the children aged 5 to 6 years. Daily long distance commutes (40 or more km each way) in fathers was associated with the highest level of emotional and behavioral problems in children.  Mother’s commute to work either daily or weekly was associated with a lower level of prosocial (positive) behavior in children. Analysis including single mothers showed that mother’s commuting 20 km or longer each way was associated with a higher level of conduct problems but a lower level of prosocial behavior in children.  This is one of two studies on this topic in the literature and much further research is needed to address causality in a more rigorously way, with more waves of longitudinal data and to examine mechanisms linking parents’ commute to work and child outcomes.