Childhood Lived Experiences of Short-Term Employment-Related Paternal Absence: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

For many Canadian families, having a parent work away from home for extended periods of time has become an accepted way of life. This employment arrangement is especially prominent within Canada’s resources extraction industry. However, despite employment-related parental absence being experienced by thousands of Canadian families, little research exists that examines the effects on the children involved. The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis was to understand the experiences of young adults who grew up in families where their father worked away from home on a short-term rotational basis. The childhood experience of four young adults was characterized by: Experiencing Paternal Absence, Adjusting to Paternal Absence, Temporal Adjustment, and Perceiving the Experience of Others. The results suggest that employment-related paternal absence families are able to harness the advantages of this life-style, while adjusting to and coping with the disadvantages. Counsellors are positioned to support the adaptive capacities of these families.