Learning Curve: Coping with job loss

In my experience, student behaviour and academic performance that rouses concern can often be linked to problems at home. These may range from marital problems to a sibling's health issue or a parent's job loss, but the number of cases have been fairly consistent through my teaching career.

In recent years, however, I have observed an increase in students facing such issues that coincided with fallout from the 2008 collapse of international financial markets, with nearly every industry experiencing job cuts. With one student, it went from falling behind in her homework to falling grades in all subjects. The faculty later learned that her father had lost his job.

A Norwegian analysis confirms the observations that parents' loss of a job has an adverse effect on the child's academic performance, although researchers Mari Rege, Kjetil Telle and Mark Votruba's findings suggest that mental distress resulting from a father's displacement from work is generally more severe than that if a mother loses her job.

Any change in circumstances can be unnerving for students, even if it's moving from a home on The Peak to one on the outlying islands, when it is an outcome of parental job loss or marriage break-up.

How can parents help their children deal with this change in the family situation?

Jill Jukes, co-author of I've Been Fired Too, argues we can go a long way to ease the stress associated with unemployment by keeping our children informed in a realistic way that focuses on a positive outcome.