Are family jobs safe for teens?

New research reveals that family-linked summer jobs for teenagers come with a higher likelihood of injury

SUNDAY WAS THE first day of summer, meaning high school exams will have wrapped up, and teenagers will be about to head into their summer jobs over the next few weeks. Some of those will be heading into jobs at the family business.

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Cushy, easy, safe gig, you might be thinking? Not so, says some new research from the University of Calgary and Concordia University. “Our recent research suggests that family employment does not automatically make work safer,” write Nick Turner (of the University of Calgary) and Steve Granger (of Concordia), in The Conversation. “In some cases, working for a parent may make safety conversations less frequent and may be linked to a greater risk of injury.”

It’s a counterintuitive finding — one might think teenagers at the family business would be, if not coddled and protected, at least beneficiaries of an extra layer of concern from their parental superiors. But what the researchers found was a complicated set of dynamics at play that, in many cases, mean that safety discussions either don’t come up or are relaxed.

“While parental influence can bolster safety behaviour, even beyond that of supervisors or coworkers, dual-role relationships may also lead to the relaxation of formal protocols,” the researchers wrote in their study. “Depending on the nature of the work arrangement, safety knowledge may be conveyed more as moral advice rather than as practical instruction, or omitted entirely.”

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The researchers argue that while there are lots of benefits to family jobs, things get complicated when it comes to safety. In many cases, the teenager has been in the workspace before — sometimes frequently. “They may know the physical space, the people in the business and the rhythms of working there. That familiarity can be useful, but it can also produce dangerous assumptions,” the researchers said. “Parents may assume their child already knows what to do.” Plus, safety advice from a parent might register as a parental lecture, rather than actual safety advice.

But the researchers don’t want to see families stop hiring their teens for the summer (the current youth unemployment situation doesn’t want that, either). “The message for parents and family businesses is not to avoid hiring young family members. It is to stop assuming that love, trust and familiarity are enough,” they explained. “Parents should treat the job as a real job. A family job can be a good summer job. It just shouldn’t be an informal one.” Kieran Delamont