The proposed study intends to extend on previous research by Peterson, Andrejic, Corkin, Waldie, Reese & Morton (2017), and explore the reported highlights and challenges of parenting 2-year-olds within the Growing Up in New Zealand study. Peterson et al. examined the different highlights and challenges parents had experienced in the first nine months of their child's life; this study would extend the research to explore highlights and challenges with the child at the child's age of two. The study would take an exploratory angle and would investigate parents’ employment to find out whether there is a relationship between parental employment and the highlights and challenges of parenting. In addition, the study would focus more specifically on working parents' highlights and challenges with the child themselves, rather than considering all general highlights and challenges since birth.

The study would aim to uncover whether there is a link between the highlights and challenges of parents and their employment status, and whether this varies between differences in employment status. It would then go on to examine possible predictors within employment of working parents’ highlights and challenges, and create recommendations for parents, whānau, and policy development in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Reference: Peterson, E. R., Andrejic, N., Corkin, M. T., Waldie, K. E., Reese, E., & Morton, S. M. B. (2017). I hardly see my baby: challenges and highlights of being a New Zealand working mother of an infant. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online. DOI: 10.1080/1177083X.2017.1391852