NEW YORK — Greg Cramer was hoping the salary boost from his new job would make life a little easier for his family. But just a few months after starting work as a manufacturing-plant manager last year, a major customer’s financing fell through and he was laid off for the first time in his career.
The plant shut down for three months. Cramer then went back to work for about eight months, only to be laid off again. The Toledo, Ohio, dad might still be unemployed if he hadn’t decided to buy his own business, which links manufacturers and companies looking to get products made.
At home, the employment roller coaster meant living on unemployment checks that provided about 80 percent of his paycheck.
At first, his daughters, Renae, now 16, and Emily, 14, were worried. Would they lose their house or have to move and give up their friends? Could they still plan on going to college?
“My wife and I explained to them we are frugal people, we have a savings account, we will survive this,” Cramer recalled. “We had some adjustments here and there about attitudes, but continued to teach them that tough times fall on everyone.”
The experience brought to life a debate that parents throughout the country are having as the recession grinds on and unemployment becomes more common: Should you tell the kids you lost your job? And should they be involved in making decisions about how the family spends money while members are out of work?
A lot of parents don’t want to burden their children with concerns they can’t do anything about, said Jerry Shapiro, a psychologist and professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University in California. But if the income loss means lifestyle changes, he said, it makes sense to include the kids.
That doesn’t mean involving them in trying to figure out how to pay the bills. But it does involve making sure they understand the reason for things like cutbacks to family vacation plans or the loss of their favorite cable channels.
“If the parents can’t afford certain things (for the kids) they need to tell them,” Shapiro said. “Children are remarkably adaptable,” he added.
