Farm and ranch parents know how challenging it can be to balance children and work, especially when childcare options are limited. These challenges can have consequences for the farm business, the safety of children and the well-being of the family as a whole.
To better understand farm and ranch families’ lived realities balancing children and work, researchers at the National Farm Medicine Center are asking farmers to share their experiences through a new national survey. Associate research scientist Florence Becot explains.
“This is a study that we’re doing with a colleague at The Ohio State University and it’s really to understand what are the experiences of farm families raising children on farms and how that intersects with their ability to do the farm work as well as the safety of the children.”
Becot says it’s an important study as the farm bill process is underway, and the American Farm Bureau Federation listed access to rural child care as a priority for the farm bill.
“What really we’re hoping to do is have preliminary findings early in the spring so that we can share this preliminary findings with people who are working on the farm bill. We asked a number of questions not only about what their situation is like, but also the kind of solutions that they would like to see, based on their situations And so, those questions will be important to understand what do folks in agriculture want to inform potential policy discussions that might be going on.”
Find information or a link to take the study at marshfieldresearch.org.
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