What effects can the news of a parent’s layoff potentially have on children younger than 18?
For children under 18, it’s kind of scary for them to learn that their parents lost their job. If parents don’t tell them the true information, it’s hard for children because they know something is going on and they feel insecure. For younger children, the information can take over, which may cause some uncertainty or behavioral problems. They know something’s going on, but they don’t know the real story. It’s hard for them to know what is fact. Research shows that with parents who lost more than one job over a two-year period, the children suffered, but the impact varied by which parent became unemployed. In general, it seems that boys are affected when their fathers lost their jobs and girls were affected when mothers lost their jobs. 2 How should parents tell their children that they have been laid off? How does this vary among children’s ages? Parents need to tell truthful information. They need to let them know what happened, but for younger children, parents just need to let them
